# The Merchant of Venice — Nuit Feline > Nuit Feline is the "night under the stars" entry in The Merchant of Venice's Murano Art collection - six high-concentration Extrait de Parfum released by the Vidal family's Venetian house, with an aut ## Essence Nuit Feline is the "night under the stars" entry in The Merchant of Venice's Murano Art collection - six high-concentration Extrait de Parfum released by the Vidal family's Venetian house, with an autumn-2024 official launch preceded by pre-premieres in Milan (March 2024) and at TFWA Cannes in October 2024. (wearers also carries an earlier 2023 listing for the same name with a near-identical pyramid, which strongly suggests the 2024 Murano Art version is a repackage/relaunch of a 2023 formula rather than a from-scratch composition; the catalog dates it 2024, attributed to perfumer Nanako Ogi.) Where the rest of the brand's bottles are ornate, this one is deliberately austere: glossy black lacquer with a single hand-blown blue Venetian murrina pendant at the neck. The concept is a feral, nocturnal animal scent - the name translates as "feline night" - built on raw oud and animalic suede. It is the woody-leathery-incense pole of the collection, contrasting against stablemates like the leathery Pastel Oud and floral Divine Rose. ## Scent Profile The most useful first-hand account comes from a single-wear wearers review that cuts through the marketing: "What I get, unambiguously, is a barnyardy oud fused with a lightly animalic suede effect, plus a generous dose of clove-like spicing. It's feral and nocturnal in a way that suits its name." That is the honest core of Nuit Feline. The opening flickers bright and resinous - a sappy pine-and-elemi freshness pricked by ginger and pink-pepper fizz, with cypriol (nagarmotha) adding a smoky, earthy, almost dank vetiver-like rasp underneath. That brightness is fleeting. Within ten to twenty minutes the composition warms and darkens into its heart: a barnyardy, slightly fecal oud accord smoothed by a clove-inflected nutmeg and stitched to a soft, skin-like suede. The "animal notes" listed in the pyramid read here less as a screaming civet and more as a low, warm muskiness that blurs the line between the oud and the suede. The base is the "powerful and mysterious dry down" the house promised, but in plainer terms it's a soft ambery-woody settle: frankincense resin, earthy patchouli, and amyris (the so-called "West Indian sandalwood," a cheaper creamy-woody material) rounding off the suede. one wearer reads the arc more romantically - a "damp and slightly tropical misty forest" opening (the brand's own copy invokes the misty forests of Mount Kinabalu in Borneo) sliding into a "warm/woody vanilla-like note" - but most noses agree the trajectory is fresh-spicy-forest into dense animalic oud-suede. It is a dense, tiring scent worn up close; the one critic who logged it warned the "overall density wears me out." ## Performance As an extrait built for "exceptional diffusing power and very long persistence," Nuit Feline performs in line with the format. wearers pegs it at above-average longevity and moderate-to-strong sillage (one source lists roughly strong reception longevity and 3/4 sillage). Importantly, the Murano Art collection was explicitly pitched as The Merchant of Venice addressing the longevity complaints that have dogged its cheaper lines - one one commenter noted the brand seemed to be "addressing that with this latest collection" via the high-concentration extraits. Expect all-day wear with a genuine projecting cloud in the first couple of hours, settling to a close, animalic skin scent thereafter. ## Wearing Context This is a cold-weather, evening, sit-close fragrance. The barnyardy oud and animalic suede make it a poor office or warm-weather choice and an outright risky blind buy - the reviewer who logged it called it "not remotely safe as a blind buy... best suited to people who genuinely enjoy raw oud and have a high tolerance for animalic facets." Worn deliberately, by someone who already loves the Montale/Middle Eastern oud idiom, it reads as a confident, nocturnal, autumn/winter statement. Marketed unisex, it skews masculine-neutral in the way most dense oud-suede compositions do. ## Comparisons & DNA Nuit Feline sits in the European-does-Middle-Eastern oud tradition rather than the polite designer "oud-lite" school. Its barnyardy-oud-plus-spice spine recalls Montale's Black Aoud lineage and the funkier end of Mancera, and the suede-wrapped warmth invites comparison to Tom Ford Oud Wood's smoother cousin - though Nuit Feline is dirtier and less creamy than the Tom Ford. The clove-nutmeg spicing over oud also nods to the spiced-oud territory of Maison Francis Kurkdjian Oud and Roja Dove's denser ouds, without their polish. Within its own house, it is the animalic woody counterpoint to the brand's sweeter Arabesque (often likened to Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille) and the leather-forward Pastel Oud that shares its collection. ## Reception Coverage is thin - this is a niche, expensive, recently relaunched extrait with few reviews anywhere, and no -2 critic has published a dedicated piece. Among the handful of enthusiast write-ups, sentiment splits between admiration for material quality and fatigue at the density. The most substantive English review (wearers) praised the "high quality" materials but found the overall weight wearying and the black bottle "visually low on charm" relative to the brand's usual ornateness. one wearer was more enthusiastic, framing it as a rewarding journey from misty-forest freshness to warm woods and recommending it to those willing to push past the animalic transition. The brand's own wearers teaser drew curiosity specifically for the "ginger, nutmeg and patchouli." Net: a respected-but-polarizing curiosity rather than a breakout. ## Versions & Reformulation Only one concentration exists: a 30 ml Extrait de Parfum, part of the six-piece Murano Art collection. The notable wrinkle is the dual wearers - a 2023 entry (pink pepper/ginger/elemi/pine/cypriol; nutmeg/oud/animal; frankincense/patchouli/amyris/suede) and a 2024 entry with the same materials reshuffled - which points to the 2024 Murano Art release being a repackaging/redesign of an existing 2023 composition into the new black-lacquer-with-murrina presentation rather than a reformulation in the chemical sense. Treat the two listings as the same juice in different bottles unless a side-by-side proves otherwise. ## Acquisition Notes Sold through The Merchant of Venice's own boutiques and a scattering of European niche e-tailers, generally around €200 for 30 ml of extrait - a steep per-ml price typical of the niche-extrait tier. It is not widely stocked in North America, so decants and splits are the sensible entry point given how polarizing the animalic profile is. Because the brand's testers can be hard to find ("testing fragrances from The Merchant of Venice is not always easy," as one wearer noted of the exclusive lines), a sample before committing is strongly advised. ## Notable Facts & Lore - The collection's hook is craft, not just scent: each Murano Art bottle wears a genuine handmade Venetian murrina - Nuit Feline's is blue - a millefiori glass technique perfected on the island of Murano, suspended as a gold pendant from the bottle neck. - The line debuted not at a perfume launch but on the travel-retail circuit (TFWA Cannes 2024) and a Milan pre-premiere, signaling its positioning as a luxury/boutique tier. - The brand frames the scent narratively as a trek through the misty cloud-forest of Mount Kinabalu in Borneo, "where all your senses are heightened" - an unusually specific bit of olfactory storytelling for a house better known for Venetian-trade-route romance.