Fragrances Boutique

According to Michael Edwards in Perfume Legends, Guerlain Samsara was the result both of love and a calculated business decision.¹ First the part about love. In 1985, Jean-Paul Guerlain made a perfume for an Englishwoman he wanted to seduce. She said she liked sandalwood and jasmine, so he designed for her a fragrance loaded with both notes. She wore it faithfully and told him people would cross the street to ask what her perfume was. (I guess when the chief perfumer for Guerlain supplies you with free, custom perfume, you wear enough to be smelled across a couple of lanes of traffic.)

Now the business angle. About the same time Jean-Paul was pitching woo to his English girlfriend, the house of Guerlain was rethinking its business strategy. For a century the company had created fragrances it thought were pretty, and marketing played a backseat role. By the mid-1980s, perfume wasn’t just a luxury item created by a handful of perfume houses anymore. The tidal wave of entities selling perfume that now includes car manufacturers, jewelers, country music stars, and even fast food restaurants was just cresting the horizon. Guerlain realized it had better draw up a new business model.

Big, exotic perfumes were popular. Yves Saint Laurent Opium raced to the top of the charts in 1977, and Chanel Coco followed in 1984…

The original promo for Guerlain Samsara (in French), and below the jump, a newer commercial (from 1998) starring model Katy Braitman.

According to a local newspaper, an engraved Guerlain bottle from 1870 fetched the record sum of €45,600 at an auction in the city of Arcachon, in the southwest of France.

— Read more at Perfume flacon sells at auction for €45,600 at the Independent.

Celebrity fragrances have been around a long time. Like TV, music and movie stars of today, European royalty lent their names and seals of approval to many perfume house scents in the 19^th century — and were supplied with all manner of toiletries in return. Having a queen, emperor, princess or other “noble” person or family associated with a fragrance helped sales, and Guerlain received royal “warrants” from the likes of the Queen of Belgium in 1842 and the Prince of Wales.¹ Guerlain produced many perfumes with “royal airs” — Bouquet de Duchesse, Délice du Prince, Le Bouquet de Fürstenberg, Esterházy Mixtyre, Bouquet du Roi d’Angleterre, Bouquet du Jardin du roi, Bouquet de l’Impératrice and Bouquet Napoléon.²

Pierre-François-Pascal Guerlain (who founded the Guerlain perfumery in 1828) was awarded a royal supplier patent in 1853 when he received permission from Empress Eugénie (wife of Napoléon III) to name one of his creations Eau de Cologne Impériale;³ Guerlain was given the title Perfumer to her Majesty the Empress Eugénie.² Eugénie’s cologne became famous, and its “bee design” bottles are an enduring symbol of Guerlain…

This Saturday, May 22nd, is the International Day for Biological Diversity. In Paris, the Champs Elysées will be transformed by Gad Weil’s Nature Capitale into a “green oasis” between the Arc de Triomphe and Rond Point, with 8000 garden plots featuring over over 150 plant and tree species…

I am not passionate about Guerlain’s L’Art et la Matière line: so far, they’ve been (mostly) nice, but my wallet does not quake in fear when a new one is launched, as it does when it hears of an upcoming Hermessence. My favorite so far has been the lovely Bois d’Armenie, by perfumer Annick Menardo, but despite the fact that I’ve been through a few samples and small decants, so far I’ve not been moved to buy it.

The seventh and newest in the range, Tonka Impériale, was developed by Guerlain house perfumer Thierry Wasser. As Wasser also did the only one of the group that I seriously disliked, Iris Ganache, I didn’t really get excited about Tonka Impériale until I started seeing glowing reviews. So here I am, joining the bandwagon rather late: this is really wonderful stuff…

Spring! Finally. It isn’t summer, but it’s almost summer, and if, like me, you detest the cold, that’s very nearly the best thing about it. The absolute best thing, of course, is the flowers. My list is heavily weighted towards the “pretty floral” fragrance category, and it’s also heavily weighted towards niche, and expensive. Sorry, it just worked out that way. Hopefully, my fellow bloggers did a better job on the diversity front: see Bois de Jasmin, Grain de Musc, Perfume Posse and Perfume Smellin’ Things for more top 10 lists. Meantime, here’s mine:

CB I Hate Perfume Black March: the smell of spring, and the perfect thing to wear on a warm, rainy April day, although there’s something about it that can tend towards the melancholy. If you can’t afford it, you can make do with Demeter Dirt — someone called Black March the high def version of Dirt, and that’s apt. For an entirely different take on springtime melancholy, there’s always Guerlain Après L’Ondée.

Christian Dior Diorissimo: what is spring without lily of the valley? And what’s the point of wearing a lily of the valley other than Diorissimo? Even if you disagree with me…

Guerlain has launched La Cologne du Parfumeur, a new unisex fragrance.

Guerlain’s LA COLOGNE DU PARFUMEUR! This breezy, citrus fragrance has notes of Calabrian orange blossom…

Guerlain will launch Bouquet Numéro 1 in April. The new fragrance for women is in the Aqua Allegoria range, and will be exclusive to travel retail. As with the recent Guerlain Flora Nymphéa, the inspiration is a spring garden…

Flora Nymphéa is the newest addition to the Aqua Allegoria range at Guerlain. The Aqua Allegoria fragrances are meant to showcase nature, and most years Guerlain adds one or two new scents to the series, and then they might axe a few of the older entries at the same time. At the moment, there appear to be five in production; in addition to the new Flora Nymphéa, there are four survivors from the past: Herba Fresca, Pamplelune (both 1999), Mandarine Basilic (2007) and Tiare Mimosa (2009). The packaging has been given an update this year, with new gold labels on the bottles and white outer boxes featuring a simple bee motif…

More limited edition collector fragrance bottles, with the usual disclaimers: in most of these cases, the juice is unchanged, just the bottle is “special” (or not, as the case may be), and some of these may not be available in the US.

From Cacharel, the “Jellies” collection: 20 ml atomizers of Noa, Anais Anais, Scarlett, Amor Amor y Amor Amor Tentation…

Guerlain has launched Homme L’Eau, a new flanker to 2008’s Guerlain Homme. The new scent for men is purportedly a “masterpiece of invigorating freshness”, and was developed by Guerlain house perfumer Thierry Wasser…

Three perfume commercials from director Bruno Aveillan. First, Guerlain Mahora. Below the jump, Lanvin Oxygene and Eau de Rochas.

More limited edition collector fragrance bottles, with the usual disclaimers: in most of these cases, the juice is unchanged, just the bottle is “special” (or not, as the case may be), and some of these may not be available in the US.

From Estee Lauder, a solid perfume pendant in the Bronze Goddess fragrance…

To me, Guerlain Chamade Eau de Toilette is spring in a bottle. Spraying it is like encountering a bank of daffodils on a grey day and realizing birds are chirping and winter is on its last legs. Spraying Chamade you can practically see a bouquet of purple hyacinths, stems and all, materialize, complete with a hummingbird whirring in for breakfast. While snow pummeled the East Coast, it has been unseasonably balmy here, and crocuses splatter across lawns. It’s Chamade season.

Jean-Paul Guerlain created Chamade. It launched in 1969, and in The Book of Perfumes, John Oakes writes that Guerlain spent seven years and made more than 1,300 trial versions before he perfected it.¹ Guerlain’s website calls Chamade an “oriental fruity floral” and mentions cassis buds, hyacinth, and Guerlinade as its notes. Jan Moran’s Fabulous Fragrances lists Chamade’s top notes as greens, galbanum, bergamot, hyacinth, and aldehydes; its heart as rose, jasmine, lilac, and clove; and its base as vanilla, amber, benzoin, sandalwood, and vetiver.²

If you’ve read anything about Chamade, you probably know that a chamade is the name of a pattern of drumbeat the French troops used back in the day to communicate retreat…

Tonka Impériale, launching this month, will be the seventh fragrance in Guerlain’s L’Art et la Matière line…

Flora Nymphéa will be the 2010 addition to Guerlain’s Aqua Allegoria range. As always, the inspiration is said to be “nature”, in this case, more particularly a spring garden…

More limited edition collector fragrance bottles, with the usual disclaimers: in most of these cases, the juice is unchanged, just the bottle is “special” (or not, as the case may be), and some of these may not be available in the US.

Strictly speaking these aren’t collector bottles and I don’t know if the set is limited edition (so why is it here? I suppose because it had nowhere else to go), but By Kilian will launch a coffret in February with 7.5 ml bottles of all eight of the fragrances in the L’Oeuvre Noire / Black Masterpiece collection. 95€…

Next spring, Guerlain will launch Insolence Blooming, a new flanker fragrance to 2006’s Insolence for Women. Insolence Blooming follows 2007’s My Insolence.

Insolence Blooming is a “sparkling floral, punctuated with violet, fiery berries and sensual iris”…

Idylle is the latest feminine pillar from Guerlain, and the first from house perfumer Thierry Wasser, and as such, poor thing, carries with it a fair amount of baggage. I liked Guerlain’s last such effort, Insolence, but would not be surprised to hear that it was not a big seller. I did not like the one prior to that, L’Instant, but would not be surprised to hear that it sold quite well. So.

Insolence made reference to Guerlain’s past and the brand’s famed Guerlinade base.¹ Idylle does not, so we can dispense with that right away. Instead, it offers a “contemporary interpretation” of Guerlinade, based on a “chypre signature of patchouli and white musk”. I’ve gone on ad nauseam elsewhere about the modern chypre concept — which apparently means only that you’ve added a bit of clean patchouli to the base — so I won’t belabor the point here, but I will say that there’s nothing unusual or striking enough about the patchouli and white musk base of Idylle for it to constitute a recognizable brand signature, far from it — it very neatly marks Idylle as a modern department store fragrance…

Guerlain has launched Boisé Torride, the latest addition to the Elixirs Charnels collection:

The sultry seductress is a “smouldering wood” scent…

Guerlain has launched Les Secrets de Sophie, a new perfume by Jean-Paul Guerlain presented in three limited edition bottles by French jewelry designer Sophie Levy. Les Secrets Noirs de Sophie (shown above) has accents in black, Les Secrets Poudres de Sophie in pink, and Les Secrets Nacres de Sophie, in white…