Bottle Design:
André Ricard

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La Nuit Rabanne 1985 Eau de Toilette

8.1 / 10 116 Ratings

A popular perfume by Rabanne for women, released in 1985. The scent is chypreartig-spicy. The longevity is above-average. It was last marketed by Puig.
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Main accords

Chypre

Spicy

Floral

Animal

Leathery

Fragrance Pyramid

Top Notes

Bergamot

Tangerine

Artemisia

Cardamom

Lemon

Myrtle

Heart Notes

Rose

Jasmine

Peach

Pepper

Base Notes

Oakmoss

Civet

Cedarwood

Leather

Patchouli

Perfumer

Jean Guichard

Ratings

Scent

8.1116 Ratings

Longevity

8.795 Ratings

Sillage

7.991 Ratings

Bottle

7.389 Ratings

Value for money

7.518 Ratings

Submitted by Amateur · last update on 10/14/2025.

Source-backed & verified

Smells similar

What the fragrance is similar to

La Nuit Parfum

La Nuit Eau de Parfum

Shocking Parfum

Que sais-je? (1925)

Empreinte (2012)

Nuit d'été Eau de Toilette

Reviews

10 in-depth fragrance descriptions

06/27/2015

8Scent 10Longevity 10Sillage

GothicHeart
133 Reviews

GothicHeart

Very helpful Review 10

Bad moon rising...

-"You should't have missed the party last night chap!"
-"Why dude?"
-"Cause you lost the chance to feast your eyes on the most stunning woman you'll probably ever see."
-"Really?"
-"Aye mate! She had the most breathtaking angles on her face and the most bewitching curves below it. And she did knew how to play and throw every single one of them!"
-"Gee man! Why didn't you give me a ring?"
-"Cause after she stormed the room, everyone forgot there was a world outside it."
-"Sounds like she did smelled some blood, huh?"
-"Smelled you said? Her scent buddy! Oh my...her scent!"
-"What about it pal?"
-"It was as her scarf drenched in it was wrapped around my face, taking me slowly to oblivion and rendering me incapable of uttering a single word."
-"How did it smell like chum?"
-"Dangerous, profane, sharp, dominant, and hollering "Dare me if you dare!" Like a feral animal's den, which despite the dangers that might lurk inside, it makes you feel an irresistible impulse to enter it. Like nobody's business!"
-"Surely sounds like meaning business."
-"She drunk a truckload, zeroed everyone in, smoked a carton and ripped her clothes off. Everybody, and I mean everybody, stood agape at her naked splendour!"
-"And then?"
-"And then she turned into a werewolf!"
-"A wer..."
-"And gracious sakes lad, she got even more beautiful!..."

11/09/2012

LiliumLibido
51 Reviews

LiliumLibido

Very helpful Review 7

Rough and easy

La Nuit opens up on a major chord of Artemisia: Also known as Mugwort, the bitter herbaceous plant was used in the Middle Ages to flavor dishes with its bitter buds and leaves. It was also used medicinally and for smoking. It had to be used sparingly, though: first because it is very strong, second because it is toxic in large doses.

As a top note for La Nuit, its bitterness touches the fruitiness of the myrtle, the freshness of the various citrus, and the the spiciness of the cardamom. The resulting effect is an olfactory paradox, a marriage of contrasting smells that never fails to get attention.

Continuing the theme of one spice through several notes, the heart unfolds a fugue of flowers and fruit, this time connected by pepper: Simple and bold, uncluttered and disarmingly pretty.

The base is where all this artful blending swoops into a cornucopia of powerful notes. All carefully chosen, never upstaging one another, always connecting and celebrating each other, this is a superior example of notes working in tandem, unique from each other yet seamlessly blended and smooth. All surrounded with the barest honeyed warmth, almost an illusion, but definitely there.

So, how does it smell???
Like the oldest, softest, finest leather, worn on bare skin, lived in for better or worse, sueded from overuse, it's a human smell with a strong fauve element, animalic and rough, hiding a deep tender side.
It's a troubling scent, unsettling... irreverent, even. If this were a person, it would be someone who always says out loud what no one else dares to mention.
But if it likes your skin... it will be unforgettable.
An iconoclast among fragrances.

05/03/2014

10Scent 10Longevity 10Sillage

ScentFan
336 Reviews

ScentFan

Helpful Review 6

Incredible Oriental Bargain

Out perfume bargain-shopping again, I bought Paco Rabanne's La Nuit, sprayed it on when it arrived today and grew excited. It's a first-class, classic oriental and I immediately started opening and spraying other orientals to see which one it most resembled. Not equally beautiful but different Ciara which has no oakmoss, not the subtler Cartier Panthère of many more notes, not the equally strong of sillage Caron's Infini or the extravagantly beautiful Bal à Versailles, nor Obsession by Calvin Klein. La Nuit smells like itself. The only resemblance to other great orientals is that it belongs with them. Ever since applying it, my nose wants to be nowhere else, though I've sprayed both hands and wrists and arms with these other scents. Guess that's not a fair comparison for BaV since I used only the cologne, instead of the parfum. Same with Panthère. La Nuit is a passionate fragrance that inspires passion in me -- to immediately order a sample of artemisia so I can isolate it in this glorious smell and then to do a sniff fest of full-blown orientals to find out if my nose is just weird tonight or whether this fragrance belongs at the very top of the genre, as I suspect. Meanwhile, I'm ordering a second bottle before I post this in case you make a beeline for google, as I suggest, and this precious sweetheart vanishes altogether ... okay, back! Did I buy 18 other bargain basement orientals from the 80's at the same time, just in case any are similarly sublime? Um...yep! Hmmm...I think I should consider selling Perfume Bonds. Off, newly in love.

07/24/2012

jtd
484 Reviews

jtd

Very helpful Review 3

lovely rose chypre

To read other people’s impressions of La Nuit, it is a scent of nostalgia, or something symbolic of an era (the late 70s, it seems, even though it was released in 1985.) I love that scent allows us to make these connections, whether highly personal or shared. To me, La Nuit is evocative of 2007 when I first smelled it. I never got the ‘takes me back’ thing. And having come up in mid 80s New York, believe me I yearn for those good old, bad old 70s. 70s New York was arcadia to the Reagan/AIDS scary 80s.

But I don’t get any of that from La Nuit. It’s the end product of a series of olfactive associations. Start with honey and civet. Honey registers to the nose as richness and starts to smell like piss as it gets concentrated. ( I know this from the comb from the hive that grew in our ceiling last summer.) Civet smells anal and then seems spicy /floral in dilution. Turn the volume up and down on these things and you get a range of strong olfactory ideas.

Set these two on the other principal notes, rose and leather, and the whole thing starts sliding back and forth between wholesome and jaded. Honey brings out the sweet and fruity elements of the rose; civet makes rose arid, spicy and hot. Honey makes leather rich and lavish; civet gives leather the nose-feel of sandpaper.

La Nuit allows others to relish the connection to an era. To me, the associations are a little more abstract. Isn’t it great that a perfume can do this to us?

01/31/2012

8Scent 7.5Longevity 7.5Sillage

Lola82
361 Reviews

Lola82

La Nuit

The leather note is promising but it falls
short due to the green note drydown but it's not merely a disappointment as it seems it becomes more warmer with the presence of amber and spiciness of rose
the drydown is almost like an homage to the 1845 release of Creed's FLEURS DE BULGARIE with it's warm amberic rose scent
but La nuit is more of a modern edgier
and yet less abuse-of-the-power of Bandit or a cigar smoked room like decadence of habanita, La nuit has an
reserved iciness an inner calm that bandit and habanita can't compare with
almost translucent of your soul and of
the namesake La Nuit.

Every scent tells a story every note
that a perfumer puts in each bottle has
a meaning to his or her life story or an
influence to the perfumer and everyone
has their own interpratation of what
conjures in their minds,

Perhaps for me maybe this is an metaphor
of why there's a heavy greenish opening
it has to do with the dominant worldly
woman and naive school girl sheltered and experienced and the two main notes
exemplifies well like the Leather represent the dominant woman and sexuality' and the
greenish note is the school girl yearning wistfully for her.

This is perfume is about repressed desires and a repressed sexuality in a
Bottle.

More reviews

Statements

19 short views on the fragrance

Cumulnimbus

4 years ago

10Scent 7.5Longevity 7.5Sillage

Used leather trousers. Honeyed rose, leather and civet. Bold and dark, amazingly human. One of the best dirty leathers ever made.

MonsieurTest

3 years ago

8.5Scent 9Longevity 8Sillage

P. Rabanne just passed away
This was his (& Guichard's)
most beautiful scent:
Dark Chypre
Delicately fruity, softly floral, subtly animalic and mossy.
RIP!

Translated · Show original

Midnights

1 year ago

9Scent 8Longevity 8Sillage

Chypre claws in metallic
wiry fingers
reach through the floral kaleidoscope
deep into the moss
leaving scratch marks on the skin *

Translated · Show original

FrauKirsche

3 years ago

8.5Scent 8Longevity 8Sillage

In the twilight
candles give off citrus light
Fruits in the garden
Dark soap bubbles
burst on leather
Velvet paws
scream in the night...

Translated · Show original

Yatagan

7 years ago

8.5Scent 9Longevity 8Sillage

The refinement of a chypre with peach notes reminds me of Mitsouko and has a sophisticated animalistic arrow in its quiver with civet.

Translated · Show original

Mörderbiene

5 years ago

6Scent 9Longevity 9Sillage

In essence, Haribo in a litter box.
A true cacophony of fruit, flower, spice, wood, resin, leather, and animal.
Everything is there and too much of everything.

Translated · Show original