Black Phantom is Kilian Hennessy’s rum-and-coffee fragrance, released in 2017 and composed by Sidonie Lancesseur. A Martinique rum accord opens onto a strong coffee that Java vetiver turns bitter, before a base where sugar cane joins a creamy sandalwood. The house files it with its Bois de Caves and launched it under a black lacquered skull.
Rum, coffee, sugar cane and sandalwood: Black Phantom belongs to the gourmand woody register, and the house classes it among the woods despite the sweetness of its opening.
What Kilian states
The house gives rum and caramel in the top, coffee in the heart, cyanide and sugar cane in the base, and keeps three main raw materials: rum, coffee, sandalwood. Java vetiver is named as the earthy counterweight to the coffee; it is placed here alongside it.
Cyanide and almond
The cyanide accord belongs to the story as much as to the formula: the house explains that what passes for almond is in fact the smell of the poison. No raw material carries that name, and almond is cited only as the illusion produced. Neither one appears in the notes.
Sugar cane
Sugar cane anchors the base of the composition with sandalwood, and the house places it in the base on each of its country pages. It has no equivalent among the raw materials listed here and therefore does not enter the notes retained.
What stays outside
The 2017 description named a woody accord of Java vetiver, Indonesian patchouli and sandalwood, held against an Ethiopian coffee absolute. The current page has dropped the patchouli and the origin of the coffee: neither is retained.
What the label declares
The list is short — denatured alcohol, fragrance, water — and carries a single declared allergen, isoeugenol, with BHT as antioxidant.