"The world upside down" By Luca Turin
Go to the perfume section of a large department store (I did in Paris last week) and take a look around. A revolution has happened virtually overnight: the little "niche" perfumeries now take center stage, and the great firms of the past are relegated to the outer edges. If someone had told me this a few years ago, I would have jumped with joy at the prospect. Now steal a bunch of smelling strips at the Chanel stand, spray on the little guys, take them home and smell them at leisure. What do you find ? With a very few exceptions (read on), not a single great perfume.
Instead, you’ve got the fragrance equivalent of second-rate naïf paintings: faux simple, cute names, a sort of pigeon-toed mediocrity raised to the level of artistic manifesto. Then read the press releases: a torrent of blather about natural, expensive materials, a solemn rejection of all that is crassly commercial about the big firms. You’d think these guys had chased black orchids half-way across New Guinea to bring you the bottle you’ve just paid 100 € for. Smell the perfume, though, and you know they never left Leverkusen.
How did it come to this ? Very simple: they are in it for the money. The world is full of suckers that will buy a perfume merely because it is not from a big firm, naively thinking no-0ne else will be wearing it. This is like preferring Hummel to Mozart because nobody hums Hummel. Second, the competition between niche products is slack, so they get sloppy. Say what you will about Big Names but when they award a brief to a fragrance house, the thing has been fought over by every good perfumer in the world, and the winner has gone through several hundred variations. This does not mean it will be good, but it virtually guarantees that you’re not smelling a first draft.
The exceptions ? A few small firms that consistently produce great perfumes, such as Patricia de Nicolai and Serge Lutens. But there is one firm that looks like the beginning of a story in the Grand Manner, like Coty, Guerlain, Caron and Piguet: Frédéric Malle. Malle is the Diaghilev of fragrance: he’s got the greatest perfumers falling over each other to compose for him, and he does their work justice by using the best raw materials. Order his "coffret à essais" on http://www.editionsdeparfums.com: 12 perfumes for 75€, at least seven of which deserve to still be there in 2024.
March 1, 2004
February 1, 2004
"Evolution" By Luca Turin
"Evolution" By Luca Turin
A few years ago a committee was set up in France to look into the problem of plagiarism in fragrance. A jury composed of professionals and perfume lovers was to decide whether a given fragrance was a blatant copy of an existing one, and act as an expert witness in several juicy lawsuits. The idea foundered when it became clear that such a committee would probably reject some of the greatest fragrances ever made: Rive Gauche was an unsweetened Calandre , Dolce Vita the dusky sister of Féminité du Bois, Lolita Lempicka an ornate variation (the first of many) on Angel. In each case, however, the copy was arguably better than the original. Perfumery is still a classical art in which, as Charles Colton once put it, imitation is the sincerest flattery.
The fact is that perfumes, like species, usually evolve in incremental steps. When closely related, they can even interbreed to produce rare and splendid hybrids. Estée Lauder’s latest, Beyond Paradise, is one such marvel. If it had a coat of arms, it would be a four-generation mosaic of fleur-de-lys. This is the matchmaker’s dream come true, a perfect heir to several princely houses of fragrance. Its lineage is second to none: in the beginning there was Diorella, the first fragrance to break free from the notion that flowers were wholesome, with an overripe note that urged one not to delay tasting the forbidden. Then it’s creator Edmond Roudnitska apparently took a contrary tack and worked with Jacques Polge on the pallid and haughty Cristalle, a floral form bathed in the cold light of a sculptor’s studio.
A few years later, Calice Becker’s Tommy Girl proved that a tea base could make a floral shine as brightly as the inside of an alien spaceship. She went on to compose the wonderfully seamless J’Adore, where this brightness is dimmed to the glow of a sunset on snow. At this point it would have been legitimate to suppose that the idea was exhausted. Wrong ! Beyond Paradise begins with the most breathtaking floral chord ever, a hundred close-miked voices singing in unison. That alone would suffice, but what happens next is even more remarkable. A great artist at the peak of her powers, Becker has taken the bone structure from Cristalle, the tempting flesh from Diorella, the flattering hue of J’Adore and the radiance of Tommy Girl, and fused them all into a seraphic being we foolishly thought would never come: the Perfect Floral.
A few years ago a committee was set up in France to look into the problem of plagiarism in fragrance. A jury composed of professionals and perfume lovers was to decide whether a given fragrance was a blatant copy of an existing one, and act as an expert witness in several juicy lawsuits. The idea foundered when it became clear that such a committee would probably reject some of the greatest fragrances ever made: Rive Gauche was an unsweetened Calandre , Dolce Vita the dusky sister of Féminité du Bois, Lolita Lempicka an ornate variation (the first of many) on Angel. In each case, however, the copy was arguably better than the original. Perfumery is still a classical art in which, as Charles Colton once put it, imitation is the sincerest flattery.
The fact is that perfumes, like species, usually evolve in incremental steps. When closely related, they can even interbreed to produce rare and splendid hybrids. Estée Lauder’s latest, Beyond Paradise, is one such marvel. If it had a coat of arms, it would be a four-generation mosaic of fleur-de-lys. This is the matchmaker’s dream come true, a perfect heir to several princely houses of fragrance. Its lineage is second to none: in the beginning there was Diorella, the first fragrance to break free from the notion that flowers were wholesome, with an overripe note that urged one not to delay tasting the forbidden. Then it’s creator Edmond Roudnitska apparently took a contrary tack and worked with Jacques Polge on the pallid and haughty Cristalle, a floral form bathed in the cold light of a sculptor’s studio.
A few years later, Calice Becker’s Tommy Girl proved that a tea base could make a floral shine as brightly as the inside of an alien spaceship. She went on to compose the wonderfully seamless J’Adore, where this brightness is dimmed to the glow of a sunset on snow. At this point it would have been legitimate to suppose that the idea was exhausted. Wrong ! Beyond Paradise begins with the most breathtaking floral chord ever, a hundred close-miked voices singing in unison. That alone would suffice, but what happens next is even more remarkable. A great artist at the peak of her powers, Becker has taken the bone structure from Cristalle, the tempting flesh from Diorella, the flattering hue of J’Adore and the radiance of Tommy Girl, and fused them all into a seraphic being we foolishly thought would never come: the Perfect Floral.
January 1, 2004
"Elle Pour Lui" By Luca Turin
"Elle Pour Lui" By Luca Turin
Symmetry (see last month’s column) demands that men be allowed, at long last, to wear feminine fragrances. This does not mean doing anything sudden, like showing up at the office party in fairy princess costume, or wearing La Perla silk knickers under your cords. Rather, think of perfume as music that plays when you appear, and try a change of leitmotiv from Mission Impossible to, say, Doctor Zhivago. Remember that you now have at your disposal the vast range of feminine raw materials, from violets (viola d’amore) to tuberose (Wagner tuba). You must choose your own tune , keeping in mind an overall dynamic marking: nothing above mezzo forte.
A few programme notes to get everyone started. If you want your melody spare and poignant, like Satie’s Gymnopédies, go for Guerlain’s 1916 Après l’Ondée, or Patricia de Nicolai’s magnificient Odalisque, a strange, floral-salty fragrance of faultless discretion. You prefer the solid-chocolate sound of Rubinstein playing Chopin’s Nocturnes ? Shalimar (regular or lite) or Coty’s Emeraude, if you can still find it on the Web. For less peace and a lot more heartbreak, as in Schumann’s Arabesque, Serge Lutens’ Iris Silver Mist is unsurpassed.
Ready for ensemble playing ? For those who inhabit the sensitive (eighteen-) nineties, Guerlain’s l’Heure Bleue or Caron’s Nuit de Noël will supply the Fauré soundtrack. If Janácek wrote your favourite string quartet , a Germaine Cellier perfume is needed: Bandit (Piguet) especially, though it lost some of its angular passion in the 1999 reissue. Try also the reckless brilliance of Black (Bulgari), Annick Ménardeau’s talcum-and-rubber masterpiece. Does your heart hanker instead for the breezy elegance of early Modernism ? Do you think Prokofief’s Peter tune eats the Wolf’s alive? Then wear Caron’s euphoric Royal Bain de Champagne or its modern reinterpretation Flower (Kenzo) and go fetch your monocle.
Steadied by an intermission drink and stroll, you are now ready for the main event. If you want the steely radiance of Corelli, then Tommy Girl (marked pianissimo) will follow you around playing a dozen concerti grossi. My own idea of heaven is the slow movement of a late Mozart piano concerto, and nothing translates better its velvet stillness than Jean Kerléo’s aptly named Sublime (Patou). Finally, if you take your marching orders from the final movement of Bruckner’s Eighth, brass tuttis and all, then go for the eighth-ounce of Bal à Versailles, a perfume so big and Romantic it seems odd that it can be made to fit in such a tiny bottle.
Symmetry (see last month’s column) demands that men be allowed, at long last, to wear feminine fragrances. This does not mean doing anything sudden, like showing up at the office party in fairy princess costume, or wearing La Perla silk knickers under your cords. Rather, think of perfume as music that plays when you appear, and try a change of leitmotiv from Mission Impossible to, say, Doctor Zhivago. Remember that you now have at your disposal the vast range of feminine raw materials, from violets (viola d’amore) to tuberose (Wagner tuba). You must choose your own tune , keeping in mind an overall dynamic marking: nothing above mezzo forte.
A few programme notes to get everyone started. If you want your melody spare and poignant, like Satie’s Gymnopédies, go for Guerlain’s 1916 Après l’Ondée, or Patricia de Nicolai’s magnificient Odalisque, a strange, floral-salty fragrance of faultless discretion. You prefer the solid-chocolate sound of Rubinstein playing Chopin’s Nocturnes ? Shalimar (regular or lite) or Coty’s Emeraude, if you can still find it on the Web. For less peace and a lot more heartbreak, as in Schumann’s Arabesque, Serge Lutens’ Iris Silver Mist is unsurpassed.
Ready for ensemble playing ? For those who inhabit the sensitive (eighteen-) nineties, Guerlain’s l’Heure Bleue or Caron’s Nuit de Noël will supply the Fauré soundtrack. If Janácek wrote your favourite string quartet , a Germaine Cellier perfume is needed: Bandit (Piguet) especially, though it lost some of its angular passion in the 1999 reissue. Try also the reckless brilliance of Black (Bulgari), Annick Ménardeau’s talcum-and-rubber masterpiece. Does your heart hanker instead for the breezy elegance of early Modernism ? Do you think Prokofief’s Peter tune eats the Wolf’s alive? Then wear Caron’s euphoric Royal Bain de Champagne or its modern reinterpretation Flower (Kenzo) and go fetch your monocle.
Steadied by an intermission drink and stroll, you are now ready for the main event. If you want the steely radiance of Corelli, then Tommy Girl (marked pianissimo) will follow you around playing a dozen concerti grossi. My own idea of heaven is the slow movement of a late Mozart piano concerto, and nothing translates better its velvet stillness than Jean Kerléo’s aptly named Sublime (Patou). Finally, if you take your marching orders from the final movement of Bruckner’s Eighth, brass tuttis and all, then go for the eighth-ounce of Bal à Versailles, a perfume so big and Romantic it seems odd that it can be made to fit in such a tiny bottle.
December 1, 2003
"Lui pour Elle" By Luca Turin
"Lui pour Elle" By Luca Turin
The first time I understood that perfume might require courage was when a family friend, a tall, handsome woman with an aquiline profile, short blonde hair, high colour on her cheekbones, a rasping voice and piercing blue eyes breezed into our Paris flat. I was nine, she was thirty-two, she wore tweeds and Guerlain’s Vetiver for men. I fell in love. This was 1962, and at the time her behaviour (though sadly not towards me) was on the edge of scandal. We have since mercifully got used to many things. Amazons, like successful businessmen, no longer have to wear suits to work. But we still say as much by our dislikes as by our likes. Masculine perfumes come in handy, because most are refusals made smell: absolutely not this, not that, no flowers, no Barbie Pink, no come-hither cloud, and above all no laughter. In short, the stuff Easter Island statues would wear if they ever shaved.
So many taboos, so little time: now that the words "smart" and "gorgeous" have got used to being spoken in the same breath, what can a woman do? First of all, remember the Russian cure for hiccups: "run three times round the house without thinking of the word wolf ". Do as it says, banish all virile thoughts, slip into a full-length silk faille[2] dress the colour of a rare beetle and go pick the most cross-combed, stoic-in-the-face-of-good-news fragrance you can find. A good place to start might be Yves Saint Laurent’s Rive Gauche pour Homme in its elegantly funereal striped aluminium bottle. This is a classic fern, a distant descendant of Paul Parquet’s 1881 Fougère Royale, and there are many others ranging from Klein’s 1981 Calvin, recently reissued, to Martin Heidenreich’s sublime 1979 Azzaro pour Homme. Keep it a secret: these matt-black stealth fragrances will get you though enemy defences before they’ve had time to sound the alarm.
You should by now be feeling ready for riskier missions. Fancy turning the tables on for good, stealing the guy’s career plan and enjoying the view from a corner office ? Take his fragrance as well, one of those sultry confections for Italians in open white shirts. Maurice Roucel’s brilliantly concise Lapidus pour Homme, Gucci’s cod-mystical incense-laden Pour Homme, or Caron’s ever-wonderful and underrated No.3 (formerly Troisième Homme) will get you noticed. But if after all these adventures you want to settle down with an invisible companion for life, then try my favourite: Yohji Homme, composed by Patou perfumer Jean-Michel Duriez. But step on the gas, they’re discontinuing it when stocks run out.
The first time I understood that perfume might require courage was when a family friend, a tall, handsome woman with an aquiline profile, short blonde hair, high colour on her cheekbones, a rasping voice and piercing blue eyes breezed into our Paris flat. I was nine, she was thirty-two, she wore tweeds and Guerlain’s Vetiver for men. I fell in love. This was 1962, and at the time her behaviour (though sadly not towards me) was on the edge of scandal. We have since mercifully got used to many things. Amazons, like successful businessmen, no longer have to wear suits to work. But we still say as much by our dislikes as by our likes. Masculine perfumes come in handy, because most are refusals made smell: absolutely not this, not that, no flowers, no Barbie Pink, no come-hither cloud, and above all no laughter. In short, the stuff Easter Island statues would wear if they ever shaved.
So many taboos, so little time: now that the words "smart" and "gorgeous" have got used to being spoken in the same breath, what can a woman do? First of all, remember the Russian cure for hiccups: "run three times round the house without thinking of the word wolf ". Do as it says, banish all virile thoughts, slip into a full-length silk faille[2] dress the colour of a rare beetle and go pick the most cross-combed, stoic-in-the-face-of-good-news fragrance you can find. A good place to start might be Yves Saint Laurent’s Rive Gauche pour Homme in its elegantly funereal striped aluminium bottle. This is a classic fern, a distant descendant of Paul Parquet’s 1881 Fougère Royale, and there are many others ranging from Klein’s 1981 Calvin, recently reissued, to Martin Heidenreich’s sublime 1979 Azzaro pour Homme. Keep it a secret: these matt-black stealth fragrances will get you though enemy defences before they’ve had time to sound the alarm.
You should by now be feeling ready for riskier missions. Fancy turning the tables on for good, stealing the guy’s career plan and enjoying the view from a corner office ? Take his fragrance as well, one of those sultry confections for Italians in open white shirts. Maurice Roucel’s brilliantly concise Lapidus pour Homme, Gucci’s cod-mystical incense-laden Pour Homme, or Caron’s ever-wonderful and underrated No.3 (formerly Troisième Homme) will get you noticed. But if after all these adventures you want to settle down with an invisible companion for life, then try my favourite: Yohji Homme, composed by Patou perfumer Jean-Michel Duriez. But step on the gas, they’re discontinuing it when stocks run out.
November 1, 2003
"Yes, but which?" By Luca Turin
"Yes, but which?" By Luca Turin
In the remote past, when high heels ruined parquet floors and women were full of little secrets, they didn’t so much choose a perfume as marry it. For the lucky ones, life was simple: a two-ounce bottle of Joy would last longer than the average lover, there were only three or four fragrance firms to worry about and everyone else appeared to be wearing Violettes de Toulouse. As for men, they asked their barber and walked home with Aqua Velva. Things have since got more interesting: there are now 400 new fragrance launches a year, and even the duty-free at Khabarovsk Airport tries to sell you things named after celebrities you’ve never heard of. Until recently, walking across the ground floor of a department store meant fending off painted creatures armed with sprays, furies in a fragrant circle of Hell. Then came Sephora, a chain of stores where you can smell in your own time, and everything became easy again. Everything, that is, except choosing.
Fortunately, the human talent for classification has not been idle. The great German firm of Haarmann & Reimer, now renamed Symrise.com after merging with their arch-rivals across the street in Holzminden, produces a wonderful genealogy poster of fragrance which they will send to anyone who asks nicely. The vertical axis is time, starting with Fougère Royale in 1881, the horizontal is a spectrum of fragrances from floral to leather. That, of course, is the hard bit, because nobody agrees where things fit. The taxonomy committee of the Société Technique des Parfumeurs de France spends agreeable hours each month in arcane discussions on the subject. Press releases are full of new phyla: oceanic florals etc.
Fortunately, this field has found its Linnaeus in Michael Edwards. A perfume lover of rare and erudite passion, he has developed the only classification scheme that actually works, and put together a superb book available at fragrancesoftheworld.com. You can even try his classification on the Web before shelling out. How does it work ? Suppose your mother judiciously wore K by Krizia in 1981. Look it up in the index, you will find that it belongs in the "Soft Florals" of which Chanel No 5 is the Urduft. Once you have landed on that page, you find that it sits in the "Crisp" column, one of four ranging from Fresh to Rich. Each contains dozens of perfumes with date of creation. Study this for a while and you can confidently stride into your local perfumery to demand Royalissime by Prince Henri d’Orléans before settling reluctantly for the (vastly superior) White Linen.
In the remote past, when high heels ruined parquet floors and women were full of little secrets, they didn’t so much choose a perfume as marry it. For the lucky ones, life was simple: a two-ounce bottle of Joy would last longer than the average lover, there were only three or four fragrance firms to worry about and everyone else appeared to be wearing Violettes de Toulouse. As for men, they asked their barber and walked home with Aqua Velva. Things have since got more interesting: there are now 400 new fragrance launches a year, and even the duty-free at Khabarovsk Airport tries to sell you things named after celebrities you’ve never heard of. Until recently, walking across the ground floor of a department store meant fending off painted creatures armed with sprays, furies in a fragrant circle of Hell. Then came Sephora, a chain of stores where you can smell in your own time, and everything became easy again. Everything, that is, except choosing.
Fortunately, the human talent for classification has not been idle. The great German firm of Haarmann & Reimer, now renamed Symrise.com after merging with their arch-rivals across the street in Holzminden, produces a wonderful genealogy poster of fragrance which they will send to anyone who asks nicely. The vertical axis is time, starting with Fougère Royale in 1881, the horizontal is a spectrum of fragrances from floral to leather. That, of course, is the hard bit, because nobody agrees where things fit. The taxonomy committee of the Société Technique des Parfumeurs de France spends agreeable hours each month in arcane discussions on the subject. Press releases are full of new phyla: oceanic florals etc.
Fortunately, this field has found its Linnaeus in Michael Edwards. A perfume lover of rare and erudite passion, he has developed the only classification scheme that actually works, and put together a superb book available at fragrancesoftheworld.com. You can even try his classification on the Web before shelling out. How does it work ? Suppose your mother judiciously wore K by Krizia in 1981. Look it up in the index, you will find that it belongs in the "Soft Florals" of which Chanel No 5 is the Urduft. Once you have landed on that page, you find that it sits in the "Crisp" column, one of four ranging from Fresh to Rich. Each contains dozens of perfumes with date of creation. Study this for a while and you can confidently stride into your local perfumery to demand Royalissime by Prince Henri d’Orléans before settling reluctantly for the (vastly superior) White Linen.
October 1, 2003
"The romantic genie and his bottle" By Luca Turin
"The romantic genie and his bottle" By Luca Turin
Some forms of beauty are forever destined to remain minority interests: for example, stand among the crowd in front of Michelangelo’s David and marvel at the veins on his large, idle white hands. Then turn 90 degrees right and look at Cellini’s Perseus, ignored, remote, aloof from the messy job just done (taking out Medusa). Now ask yourself: If, as is likely, David wears Eau Sauvage, what rare, somber fluid sits on Perseus’ bathroom shelf ?
Every child is at some point a small Perseus, and this infatuation with the dark and the lonely is for most people an acute condition, best caught early in life like mumps, and which seldom recurs. For some, however, it lasts long enough to require a matching fragrance. Those who read the Count of Monte Cristo through tears at age 50 want something to sprinkle on their stubble before setting out into a dark and stormy night. But what ?
Let me be blunt: the list is not long. We can rule out the merely melancholy: sadness has its uses, but tends towards inaction. A properly romantic perfume should incite to adventure. Wait for autumn to come, remember Radiguet’s "Le Diable au Corps" and pay a visit to Serge Lutens’ enchanted shop in the Jardins du Palais Royal. Once there, boldly demand Bois de Violette. This miraculous fragrance, a love story in a bottle, is a variation on Shiseido’s Féminité Du Bois and restores the synthetic violet of methyl ionone to its rightful place as the most poetic molecule ever made.
More virile ? Walk up among the fallen leaves to 34 Avenue Montaigne, enter the glittering Caron shop and ask for Tabac Blond, the archetypal leather fragrance. Leathers are romantic in every respect, far too much so for the average fragrance firm, every one of them a heroic commercial failure. Find Tabac Blond too sweet ? Go to the phone booth outside the Petit Palais and phone Knize & Co in Vienna at +43 1 51 22 11 90. They sell gentlemen’s apparel (Arnold Schoenberg used to dress there, conservatively one assumes) and since 1934 have been steadily making Knize Ten, as fine clean, joyful a leather as it is possible to make. More luxurious ? Double back towards Chanel in Rue Cambon and buy the greatest leather of them all, Cuir de Russie. Spray it inside your sleeves, step into the Isotta Fraschini (or maybe just a Peugeot taxi) and speed towards the expectant future.
Some forms of beauty are forever destined to remain minority interests: for example, stand among the crowd in front of Michelangelo’s David and marvel at the veins on his large, idle white hands. Then turn 90 degrees right and look at Cellini’s Perseus, ignored, remote, aloof from the messy job just done (taking out Medusa). Now ask yourself: If, as is likely, David wears Eau Sauvage, what rare, somber fluid sits on Perseus’ bathroom shelf ?
Every child is at some point a small Perseus, and this infatuation with the dark and the lonely is for most people an acute condition, best caught early in life like mumps, and which seldom recurs. For some, however, it lasts long enough to require a matching fragrance. Those who read the Count of Monte Cristo through tears at age 50 want something to sprinkle on their stubble before setting out into a dark and stormy night. But what ?
Let me be blunt: the list is not long. We can rule out the merely melancholy: sadness has its uses, but tends towards inaction. A properly romantic perfume should incite to adventure. Wait for autumn to come, remember Radiguet’s "Le Diable au Corps" and pay a visit to Serge Lutens’ enchanted shop in the Jardins du Palais Royal. Once there, boldly demand Bois de Violette. This miraculous fragrance, a love story in a bottle, is a variation on Shiseido’s Féminité Du Bois and restores the synthetic violet of methyl ionone to its rightful place as the most poetic molecule ever made.
More virile ? Walk up among the fallen leaves to 34 Avenue Montaigne, enter the glittering Caron shop and ask for Tabac Blond, the archetypal leather fragrance. Leathers are romantic in every respect, far too much so for the average fragrance firm, every one of them a heroic commercial failure. Find Tabac Blond too sweet ? Go to the phone booth outside the Petit Palais and phone Knize & Co in Vienna at +43 1 51 22 11 90. They sell gentlemen’s apparel (Arnold Schoenberg used to dress there, conservatively one assumes) and since 1934 have been steadily making Knize Ten, as fine clean, joyful a leather as it is possible to make. More luxurious ? Double back towards Chanel in Rue Cambon and buy the greatest leather of them all, Cuir de Russie. Spray it inside your sleeves, step into the Isotta Fraschini (or maybe just a Peugeot taxi) and speed towards the expectant future.
September 1, 2003
"The Fall of the House of Guerlain" By Luca Turin
"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 ?
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 ?
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