Minuit et Demi.

Collection Gourmande was born from a simple question: what does pleasure smell like? Not polite pleasure. Not restrained. The kind that makes you lean in. Stéphane Bengana built Minuit et Demi around that question, and the answer is warm, sweet, and does not apologize for itself.

Cardamom and allspice arrive first, bright and slightly sharp enough to cut through the sweetness waiting underneath. Then the heart opens, coffee and caramel, layered so they feel less like a cafe and more like the idea of a cafe at 2 AM. By the time vanilla and tobacco anchor the base, the fragrance has already made its case. Bengana understood that gourmand doesn't mean harmless. It means the scent you reach for when you want to feel taken care of, and a little dangerous doing it.

The opening hits with a quick flicker, cardamom and allspice warming the skin for ten minutes, bergamot barely visible underneath. Then coffee and caramel arrive, thick and almost edible, and they don't leave. They stay through the heart, deepening through the mid-stage as the vanilla and tobacco start to breathe underneath. Six to eight hours in, the base lingers, a warm, powdery close of musk, cashmeran, and vetiver that settles against skin like a second layer. On fabric, the tobacco and cedar last into the next day.

Minuit et Demi arrived in 2020 as Fragrance Du Bois boldly stepped outside its signature oud-centered identity. The house, renowned for its sustainable Arabian oud compositions, used this gourmande release to signal a broader creative ambition, one that could honor the brand's Middle Eastern heritage while appealing to a Western palate craving warmth and sweetness. The name itself, French for 'Midnight and a Half,' positions the fragrance as an indulgence reserved for the liminal hours, that space between late night and early dawn when gourmand scents feel most at home. This positioning tapped into a growing cultural appetite for 'late-night luxury' in perfumery, where scents became tied to mood, ritual, and time of day rather than mere occasion.