"The Fall of the House of Guerlain" By Luca Turin
The new Guerlain has arrived. This happens only every few years, and is always an event. When I was a kid every launch would subtly alter your life: you could not walk down a Paris street and remain unaware for long that a new shape was in the air. The thrill, these days, is somewhat different: when, some years ago, the Guerlain family sold the family silver to LVMH (the Microsoft of fragrance), Guerlain jumped off the skyscraper nine decades of genius had built. Its been falling in slow motion ever since, and a crowd of perfume lovers has slowly gathered to watch it crash.
First came the ludicrous Champs Elysées, a fragrance so trite, so meretricious that even the androids at LVMH must have felt pangs of conscience. Fortunately, helped by inept advertising, it failed. Then Mahora, a tropical confection, not only monumentally vulgar (no bad thing in itself), but also utterly humourless. Now, after a decent interval during which Guerlain produced several skilled but unambitious fragrances, among which the excellent Shalimar Lite, comes the "big" one.
It is called L’Instant and, for the first time in the firm’s history, is openly composed by an outside perfumer, Maurice Roucel. He is one of the greats, responsible for such masterpieces as Tocade, 24 Faubourg and Envy. Nevertheless, I wager even he felt awed at the prospect of carving his name on Guerlain’s monument. Rumour had it that France’s greatest perfume house was going to redeem itself with cost-no-object raw materials and show the world that the last five years had been a mere lapse of judgment.
Regrettably, the fall continues. From topnote to drydown L’Instant zips past known territory, from Dune to j’Adore via Allure. To be sure, the ingredients are exquisite. Roucel’s signature, magnolia leaf essence, provides a novel, quiet woody-lemony background to an excellent jasmine and ylang chord. The drydown is solid as a rock, rich and powdery. The musks smell unusually expensive: spray l’Instant on the back of your hand before dinner, and lick it when the fruit salad comes. In the Grand Manner, the perfume smells different from the eau de parfum, darker and richer.
And yet…the fragrance is less than the sum of its parts, and smells as if Roucel’s talent was diluted by a committee. It is like the idle rich at play: money and skill marshalled to provide a featureless fog of luxury, beauty without brains, plush without purpose. The ground is coming up fast. Will Guerlain survive ?
Mahora & L'Instant are great ! 'MAHORA was still something else entirely (along with BEVERLYHILLS). these were such Heavy, Heady, Intoxicating, Narcotic, Luring, Junglist, Hooker-technical, Choking, Addicitve Perfumes that even I, almost found them (and in particular the last two) ... too strong. BUT NOT ! I stocked up on GaleHayman's Beverly Hills and still have two flacons (2 times 40%) of MAHORA. and yesterday I decided to wear her again and oh my, what Room-Clearing Code4 Alarmist Presentist and Allergological Indifferent Perfume this is.' "again, it must have been in 2003 that I bought this perfume at first sniff. I remember how I loved it totally when the first notes reached my nasal receptors. and now, in the 'research' of my collection, it is still there with a fourth of 1.7oz50mL Edp left, pleasantly darkened in colour. if any perfume (and already in 2003) reached the Grape Spot, or scent of Grapeness, it was this perfume. perhaps this was due to the Fruits, used (Mandarin Orange, Red Apple, Bergamot), and then in combination especially with the (White [cold processed ?]) Honey and further all the Basenotes Amber, Vanille, Benzoin and White Musk. at least at first impression I would call this an Amber Perfume. yet it isn't exactly scarce on the Flowers either (Magnolia, Iris, Ylang, Jasmine) and with the Masterly Strokes of Genius Perfumer Maurice Roucel, this has truly become (for me) one of the Legendary Perfumes not only of Guerlain but also of, let's say, some Decades (and still). Magnolia comes forward noticeably, which in itself already is quite a feature."
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