The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Sylhouette Parfums was founded in 2018 in Romania by two Vietnamese-born perfumers, Truong Chieu Sy and Nhan Ngoc Bao Tran, both trained in France before returning to Eastern Europe to build a house on their own terms. Romance Noire was composed by Truong Chieu Sy in 2024 as part of the Les Vanites collection, a line organized around mortality and the beauty of what persists after something ends. The name tells you exactly what it holds: love looked at through loss rather than possession. Truong drew from the idea of a room where a romance once lived, now quiet, still carrying the scent of what happened there.
Truong Chieu Sy's note philosophy here centers on inevitability. By skipping the opening entirely, he removes the performative first impression most fragrances rely on and drops the wearer straight into the emotional core. The red wine note functions as both fruit and metaphor, carrying warmth and ruin in equal measure. The leather and smoke work together as a kind of olfactory environment, a room you step into rather than a scent applied to skin. Pairing suggestions follow this logic naturally: leather jackets, candlelit dinners, aged books, wool coats worn into late-night air, wine bars with exposed brick. Nothing bright, nothing clean, nothing corporate.
The evolution
The trajectory of Romance Noire is unusual because it begins already in progress, without the usual citrus or bergamot preamble most fragrances rely on. Red wine arrives immediately, wet and tannic, followed closely by wild berries whose brightness creates a deceptive first impression of sweetness. Within minutes the berries recede and smoke takes command, joined by leather and a rose that smells more like pressed petals in an old book than a fresh bouquet. Dust arrives as a structural element, giving the composition weight and history. The wine gradually fades over the first two hours, leaving the smoke-leather-rose triangle to dominate, and this is where the fragrance becomes most itself, most honest. As wear continues, the rose dries further and the smoke cools, settling into a quiet final act that lingers close to the skin.
Cultural impact
Romance Noire has carved a specific niche in the wine-leather-smoke category, a space occupied by a handful of niche releases but rarely done with this level of commitment to the dried rose and leather dyad. Comparisons to Liquides Imaginaires' Bloody Wood surface regularly among collectors who track the genre, though the two compositions diverge significantly: Bloody Wood leans into wine and berries as dominant forces, while Romance Noire centers the dried rose and leather. The more accurate companion might be Pineward's Funerie, which shares the dusty, gothic sensibility.
