Black XS for Her Eau de Parfum

Rabanne Black XS for Her Eau de Parfum is a dark, slightly sour fruit scent, and it is a good deal stranger than the bottle suggests.

Cranberry and tamarind open it, and that pairing is the whole reason this is worth attention. Cranberry is tart and red without being juicy, nearer the dried fruit than a drink, and tamarind is genuinely sour, with a sticky brown sweetness behind the acidity. Together they give the first minutes an edge that most sweet feminine scents avoid completely.

The middle goes deep rather than pretty. Rose is used dark and jammy, closer to petals bruised in the hand than to anything fresh cut, and black violet sits under it, powdery and cool and a little inky, with that faintly metallic quality violet has when it is not handled sweetly.

Then the base, which is where it becomes memorable. Black vanilla is the smoky, almost burnt reading of the material, more charred pod than custard, and massoia wood is the soft counterweight, a milky and slightly buttery wood that rounds the sharp edges off everything above it. The finish is warm, dusky and a bit sticky, and it is the part of the composition people remember weeks later.

At eau de parfum strength it lasts well into the evening and projects for the first hour or two before settling close. It is built for winter and for after dark, it is pitched at women, and it suits someone who finds most sweet fragrance boring. Emilie Bevierre Coppermann and Mark Buxton are credited, and it dates from 2007. Rabanne began as a Paris fashion house in the sixties and its perfumes were built by the Spanish group Puig, which has owned the brand since 1987.