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.
Reviewers agree on the rum and the coffee, and part ways over the announced darkness: a grown-up gourmand for some, a childhood sweet in disguise for others.
Olfastory’s review
Thomas Dunckley, The Candy Perfume Boy, April 14, 2017
Dunckley holds the fragrance to be genuinely singular: the elements are familiar to him, the alcohol, the gourmand register, but their assembly strikes him as new. Beneath the trappings of skulls and galleons he sees serious perfumery and forthright accords. What he takes from it first is pleasure: he says he did not stop smiling while wearing it.
Kafka, Kafkaesque, June 26, 2017
Kafka disputes the darkness of the premise. She describes a grown-up version of childhood sweets — caramel, cocoa, ice cream, marshmallow — and brings the fragrance close to Love, don’t be shy, with an added slug of creamy liqueur and sandalwood. She places herself outside the target, which she locates among unreserved lovers of gourmands, and grants the fragrance a comforting quality when it is smelled from a distance.
Christine Mielke, Temptalia, February 16, 2022
Mielke makes rum the star from beginning to end: rich and clean at first, softened by caramel and chocolate, with a hazelnut roundness that the coffee extends. Sandalwood arrives only late, in the drydown, over a base of caramel. She counts it among her favorite Kilians.