L'Artisan Parfumeur
Tenebrae
Tenebrae joined L’Artisan Parfumeur’s Natura Fabularis collection in 2016, six imaginary gardens signed by Daphné Bugey. The Latin name says darkness, and the number that preceded it at launch gives the count of attempts. Incense, resin and sap make up a forest so dense that light barely gets through.
- Brand
- L'Artisan Parfumeur
- Launch year
- 2016
- Perfumer
- Gender
- Unisex
- Olfactory family
- Woody
- Concentration
- Eau de Parfum
Where to buy
L’Artisan Parfumeur launched Natura Fabularis in September 2016, the year of its fortieth anniversary. Six eaux de parfum of seventy-five millilitres, all composed by Daphné Bugey, sold at one hundred and sixty euros at launch.
Six imaginary gardens
Each fragrance in the series carries a Latin botanical name and a number counting the modifications made to the formula before the final accord. Thomas Dunckley warns that none of them reproduces a real plant: these are gardens of the mind, invented outright.
Twenty-six attempts at darkness
Tenebrae took twenty-six versions, hence the number set beside its name at launch. Now Smell This sums up the subject as a dense, dark forest made of incense, resins and sap. The house describes trunks covered in resin rising towards a light the treetops barely let through.
From Natura Fabularis to La Botanique
CaFleureBon reports that the series changed its name in 2021 to become La Botanique, that it lost two entries there — Violaceum and Glacialis Terra — and that it has gained others since. Tenebrae stayed.
What the house says today
Its description comes down to three materials, incense, resin and sap, and to a setting: a shamanic forest where incense fumes steep the pure sap. Neiman Marcus places the fragrance among the woody ones.
Olfactory pyramid
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The advertising
No face, no film
No known campaign since 2016: no face, no film, no named photographer. The collection made itself known through its object and through the press.
L’Artisan Parfumeur ran no advertising campaign for Tenebrae. No face, no film, no photographer or art director is named, neither at the launch of September 2016 nor since.
What made the series known has to do with the object and with the press: the round bottle with its bee, the Now Smell This announcement of 14 September 2016, the review Thomas Dunckley devoted to it six months later. No advertising credit comes out of that.