"The end of civilisation as we know it" By Luca Turin
A terrible rumour had been circulating among perfumers for the last six months or so. Apparently, Guerlain had decided to modify all its classic fragrances (14 of them) from to bring them into conformity with IFRA guidelines. IFRA is an industry body that keeps track of any health problems arising from fragrance use, i.e. allergies, etc. Its decisions are not law, merely recommendations. When IFRA says some raw material has been found to cause allergies in a small number of people, you can either remove it or put a small label that says what it does. The accepted practice in the industry is that only new fragrances need to be totally IFRA compliant. The old ones can stay as they are, much in the way that you can still drive your 1949 Armstrong Siddeley on public roads though it has no airbags. Given that a) Guerlain’s greats have been around a long time, and b) you seldom hear, at a funeral, a friend of the deceased saying "what do you expect, she wore L’Heure Bleue", no one is asking Guerlain to do this. Well ahead of any actual regulation that would force them to do so, they are now pressing ahead with this act of vandalism rather than simply putting the little label on the bottle
Three raw materials in particular are going to be removed altogether: coumarin, oak moss and birch tar. That alone means the end of Mitsouko and Shalimar, which will henceforth smell of Eau du Soir and Vanilla Fields respectively. Finding replacements for these materials is non-trivial. There is no good coumarin substitute. Putting together a decent synthetic oakmoss has been the perfumery equivalent of proving the Riemann Conjecture in mathematics. The greatest minds have tried. One master perfumer, Arcadi Boix Camps, claims to have succeeded. You would think that Guerlain would enlist talent of that caliber to tackle this awesome task. Not a bit: they have just published an ad on the web looking for a "technical perfumer" between 25 and 28 years of age to do the job. Touchingly, they want the candidate to be good at computers and fluent in English, as if that was going to help. This is like asking the guy who tiled your bathroom to restore the Ravenna mosaics. Guerlain cannot even claim to be consistent: while plotting to destroy the fragrances everyone can buy, they are bringing back a dozen great classics (original formulae, allergies and all) to be sold only on the first floor of their store at no. 68, Champs Elysées. If you feel about this the way I do, e-mail Guerlain’s customer relations officer, isabelle Rousseau, irousseau@guerlain.fr
November 1, 2004
October 1, 2004
"Guardian Angels" By Luca Turin
"Guardian Angels" By Luca Turin
The week, like the city, the wheel and writing, is apparently a Sumerian invention. Seven days, each named after a planet-god, is just the right length: long enough to get used to work, but short enough to make it across in one piece. The fit between planets and days is uneven (Mondays aren’t very moon-like, for example, though Friday definitely belongs to Venus). Sunday, however, really is dies solis, especially when enjoyed in vacant city streets basking in morning light. For those who like waiting for nothing in particular, Sundays are an inspiration. Hopper painted their emptiness, Aaron Copland wrote down their silent music in his masterpiece, "Quiet City". But if Sunday were a perfume, which one would it be ? Which one breathes the calm that slowly fills you to your fingertips during walks with only a guardian angel for company ?
My long-time favorite was Guerlain’s Jicky, that flag-like confection (I have the Ukrainian one in mind, big earth under big sky) of lavender and vanilla. Jicky is the oldest proper perfume in existence (1889, Eau de Cologne doesn’t count) and has undergone some restoration in recent years. For once, no damage was done. It is now as good as it gets, cool on top, warm below and mercifully quiet. Gone is the layer of French sexiness that used to cloud its simple beauty. Until recently, I could see no serious contenders. Now, unexpectedly in this world geared to Monday mornings and Saturday nights, comes another great Sunday fragrance: Osmanthus, by the Different Company. Its composer is one of the founders of the outfit: Jean-Claude Ellena, who has recently become the Hermès in-house perfumer. This is Hermès’ gain and, so far, our loss, because the first fragrance in his new job (Un Jardin en Méditerrannée) has turned out nicely crafted but not particularly interesting.
Osmanthus is a different matter. The plant itself, O. fragrans has, like hyacinth and tuberose, one of those smells that God must have composed while studying organic chemistry. Soapy, powdery, definitely inedible, it is Wedgwood blue for the nose. Ellena has set it in a structure reminiscent of the soft glow of ancient perfumes like Worth’s Je Reviens. The sum total shimmers like an opal: Osmanthus feels different every time you wear it, but always intimate and reassuring. The Different Company has had the brilliant idea of offering its fragrances in small, sealed 10 ml sprays they call "48 hour refills". Their discovery pack of three promises a sensational week, though anyone who gets through that much perfume so quickly probably needs expert help.
The week, like the city, the wheel and writing, is apparently a Sumerian invention. Seven days, each named after a planet-god, is just the right length: long enough to get used to work, but short enough to make it across in one piece. The fit between planets and days is uneven (Mondays aren’t very moon-like, for example, though Friday definitely belongs to Venus). Sunday, however, really is dies solis, especially when enjoyed in vacant city streets basking in morning light. For those who like waiting for nothing in particular, Sundays are an inspiration. Hopper painted their emptiness, Aaron Copland wrote down their silent music in his masterpiece, "Quiet City". But if Sunday were a perfume, which one would it be ? Which one breathes the calm that slowly fills you to your fingertips during walks with only a guardian angel for company ?
My long-time favorite was Guerlain’s Jicky, that flag-like confection (I have the Ukrainian one in mind, big earth under big sky) of lavender and vanilla. Jicky is the oldest proper perfume in existence (1889, Eau de Cologne doesn’t count) and has undergone some restoration in recent years. For once, no damage was done. It is now as good as it gets, cool on top, warm below and mercifully quiet. Gone is the layer of French sexiness that used to cloud its simple beauty. Until recently, I could see no serious contenders. Now, unexpectedly in this world geared to Monday mornings and Saturday nights, comes another great Sunday fragrance: Osmanthus, by the Different Company. Its composer is one of the founders of the outfit: Jean-Claude Ellena, who has recently become the Hermès in-house perfumer. This is Hermès’ gain and, so far, our loss, because the first fragrance in his new job (Un Jardin en Méditerrannée) has turned out nicely crafted but not particularly interesting.
Osmanthus is a different matter. The plant itself, O. fragrans has, like hyacinth and tuberose, one of those smells that God must have composed while studying organic chemistry. Soapy, powdery, definitely inedible, it is Wedgwood blue for the nose. Ellena has set it in a structure reminiscent of the soft glow of ancient perfumes like Worth’s Je Reviens. The sum total shimmers like an opal: Osmanthus feels different every time you wear it, but always intimate and reassuring. The Different Company has had the brilliant idea of offering its fragrances in small, sealed 10 ml sprays they call "48 hour refills". Their discovery pack of three promises a sensational week, though anyone who gets through that much perfume so quickly probably needs expert help.
September 1, 2004
"Diminishing returns" By Luca Turin
"Diminishing returns" By Luca Turin
It is hard to escape the impression that each Art mines a finite seam of beauty. In that sense calling an artist inventor, i.e. finder, is probably more accurate than creator. Being first to dig is a great good fortune. Early photographers, no matter how trivial their subject, scooped up big chunks of the precious stuff at every click of the shutter. The first passenger jets, the first windsurfer have the unmistakable grace that only ample elbow room can give. In perfumery this once-only privilege belongs to François Coty. Self-taught, he started by helping a pharmacist friend put together harmless eaux de cologne, he sufficiently impressed the great Antoine Chiris, pioneer of steam distillation, to get a job with his firm before branching out on his own.
Most successful firms are built on the talents of two people, one for ideas and one for business, the latter often hidden from view. Coty was both, and built a huge empire with factories all over the world. His early creations stake out vast territories: L’Origan, Emeraude, Ambre Antique, La Rose Jacqueminot, L’Aimant spawned a dynasty each. But his greatest invention, the perfumery equivalent of the three-movement concerto, was Chypre (1917). He discovered that bergamot, oakmoss and labdanum, though interestingly different, had a common resinous side that made them stick together as an abstract idea, at once straightforward and unfathomable.
The Chypre concept tuned out to be a great structure on which to hang hundreds of variations. The fruity (Mitsouko) and floral (Miss Dior) Chypres are still with us. Though wonderful, they are in a sense compromises, like asking Athena to take off her helmet, put on a little cheek blush and smile for the family portrait. The true heirs of Chypre, in my opinion, are the somber variations: the smoky, carnation and leather Chypres like Bandit (Piguet) and Jolie Madame (Balmain) , the bitter green ones like Futur (Piguet) and the soon-to-be reissued Sous le Vent (Guerlain), the animalic Chypres like the first Boucheron and the reckless La Nuit (Rabanne). We seem to prefer women tame and affable: most of these fragrances are extinct, and were never big sellers anyway. Coty would have loved them. Like many rich men, he overreached. He got into politics, bought newspapers and ended his life a fanatical right-wing recluse. The Coty name changed hands several times and is now owned by the German firm Benckiser. Coty perfumes today ? Stetson, Céline Dion and Adidas.
It is hard to escape the impression that each Art mines a finite seam of beauty. In that sense calling an artist inventor, i.e. finder, is probably more accurate than creator. Being first to dig is a great good fortune. Early photographers, no matter how trivial their subject, scooped up big chunks of the precious stuff at every click of the shutter. The first passenger jets, the first windsurfer have the unmistakable grace that only ample elbow room can give. In perfumery this once-only privilege belongs to François Coty. Self-taught, he started by helping a pharmacist friend put together harmless eaux de cologne, he sufficiently impressed the great Antoine Chiris, pioneer of steam distillation, to get a job with his firm before branching out on his own.
Most successful firms are built on the talents of two people, one for ideas and one for business, the latter often hidden from view. Coty was both, and built a huge empire with factories all over the world. His early creations stake out vast territories: L’Origan, Emeraude, Ambre Antique, La Rose Jacqueminot, L’Aimant spawned a dynasty each. But his greatest invention, the perfumery equivalent of the three-movement concerto, was Chypre (1917). He discovered that bergamot, oakmoss and labdanum, though interestingly different, had a common resinous side that made them stick together as an abstract idea, at once straightforward and unfathomable.
The Chypre concept tuned out to be a great structure on which to hang hundreds of variations. The fruity (Mitsouko) and floral (Miss Dior) Chypres are still with us. Though wonderful, they are in a sense compromises, like asking Athena to take off her helmet, put on a little cheek blush and smile for the family portrait. The true heirs of Chypre, in my opinion, are the somber variations: the smoky, carnation and leather Chypres like Bandit (Piguet) and Jolie Madame (Balmain) , the bitter green ones like Futur (Piguet) and the soon-to-be reissued Sous le Vent (Guerlain), the animalic Chypres like the first Boucheron and the reckless La Nuit (Rabanne). We seem to prefer women tame and affable: most of these fragrances are extinct, and were never big sellers anyway. Coty would have loved them. Like many rich men, he overreached. He got into politics, bought newspapers and ended his life a fanatical right-wing recluse. The Coty name changed hands several times and is now owned by the German firm Benckiser. Coty perfumes today ? Stetson, Céline Dion and Adidas.
August 1, 2004
"JAR" By Luca Turin
"JAR" By Luca Turin
My disparaging comments on niche fragrances a few months back had the expected result: an imperious e-mail reached me two weeks later pointing out the existence of a perfume firm I’d never heard of: JAR, situated 14 rue de Castiglione, bang in the posh middle of Paris. A little research revealed that this was the perfume wing of a nearby jeweller of quasi-mythical status. Judging from an exhibition catalogue I have obtained, JAR’s jewels are fairytale stuff that makes you wish you owned Brazil. When jewellers make perfume (Boucheron, Van Cleef et Arpels, Bulgari), it is usually because they have a big name and want to generate some cash flow. But that can’t be JAR’s reason since his entire customer base can (and probably does) fit in the Ritz, and the perfumes are if anything even more confidential than the jewels.
I called up for samples, and eventually got hold of the complete collection, beautiful engraved flasks inside purple suede pouches. Gossip led me to expect something weird, and weird is what I got. JAR fragrances are uniquely shocking, and I have delayed writing this article until I could begin to understand why. Most normal Perfumes are symphonic: the idea is to blend materials the way a composer blends sounds to achieve something which is more than the sum of its parts, with the parts no longer perceptible. But JAR’s perfumes aren’t normal. They were clearly composed by a guy who spends his days picking out rubies from a box and laying them one by one next to a huge pearl. Gemstones don’t mix, God forbid, they just glow like mad.
Same with his fragrances. Instead of the usual expert blend we get sensational raw materials juxtaposed and set, all in full view under the bright lights, for maximum effect. They range from the merely grand to what Wodehouse’s Jeeves, straining for understatement, would have described as "a bit sudden". If you visit the store, a good starting point might be Golconde , a huge oriental with the cheekbones of Joan Crawford and the shoulders of Esther Williams. Once you have got used to the idea, graduate to Jarling, the sweetest, most poisonous heliotrope note ever devised. Give that one a few weeks to sink in properly, then go back and ask to smell the fragrance with no name, the one with forked lightning engraved on the bottle. Clue: tuberose and pear. If you’ve hankered all your life for André Breton’s beauté convulsive, your search is over.
My disparaging comments on niche fragrances a few months back had the expected result: an imperious e-mail reached me two weeks later pointing out the existence of a perfume firm I’d never heard of: JAR, situated 14 rue de Castiglione, bang in the posh middle of Paris. A little research revealed that this was the perfume wing of a nearby jeweller of quasi-mythical status. Judging from an exhibition catalogue I have obtained, JAR’s jewels are fairytale stuff that makes you wish you owned Brazil. When jewellers make perfume (Boucheron, Van Cleef et Arpels, Bulgari), it is usually because they have a big name and want to generate some cash flow. But that can’t be JAR’s reason since his entire customer base can (and probably does) fit in the Ritz, and the perfumes are if anything even more confidential than the jewels.
I called up for samples, and eventually got hold of the complete collection, beautiful engraved flasks inside purple suede pouches. Gossip led me to expect something weird, and weird is what I got. JAR fragrances are uniquely shocking, and I have delayed writing this article until I could begin to understand why. Most normal Perfumes are symphonic: the idea is to blend materials the way a composer blends sounds to achieve something which is more than the sum of its parts, with the parts no longer perceptible. But JAR’s perfumes aren’t normal. They were clearly composed by a guy who spends his days picking out rubies from a box and laying them one by one next to a huge pearl. Gemstones don’t mix, God forbid, they just glow like mad.
Same with his fragrances. Instead of the usual expert blend we get sensational raw materials juxtaposed and set, all in full view under the bright lights, for maximum effect. They range from the merely grand to what Wodehouse’s Jeeves, straining for understatement, would have described as "a bit sudden". If you visit the store, a good starting point might be Golconde , a huge oriental with the cheekbones of Joan Crawford and the shoulders of Esther Williams. Once you have got used to the idea, graduate to Jarling, the sweetest, most poisonous heliotrope note ever devised. Give that one a few weeks to sink in properly, then go back and ask to smell the fragrance with no name, the one with forked lightning engraved on the bottle. Clue: tuberose and pear. If you’ve hankered all your life for André Breton’s beauté convulsive, your search is over.
July 1, 2004
"Black is the new black" By Luca Turin
"Black is the new black" By Luca Turin
When I find myself a captive audience to a busking musician, say in a metro corridor, I apply a simple test to the question of whether to part with money. Get goosebumps ? Give generously. Hairs unmoved ? Walk on blameless. For some reason this shiver test only works with music, but an analogous one exists for fragrance: does a perfume make you smile the first time you smell it ? I was trying to remember when that last happened. There was, of course, the belly laugh of Angel (Mugler), but that was long ago (1992). Then the beatific smile of Beyond Paradise last year. But in between ? Only one, I’m afraid, and that was Bulgari’s Black in 1998. I’ve mentioned this masterpiece before, but a bit more explaining is required.
Years ago I met a Ferrari collector who owned a beautifully cut raincoat made of black inner-tube rubber with flat taped seams like those on an inflatable dinghy. It looked sensational, and smelled even better, of virgin tires and baby powder. I trespassed and asked him where he had bought it: "a London tailor" he said haughtily, but he was tight-lipped about details. Years later, I understood why: this thing came not from Savile Row, but from a more specialized sort of shop found in Soho. For years I would occasionally nip into the largest one, on Old Compton Street, to smell the rubber underwear hanging on the racks, under the indifferent eye of the staff for whom this ranked as a minor affliction.
Since Black you can take that smell home with you without having to hide it from your mom under a pile of cardigans. I have no idea how the idea came about, but at about the same time Bulgari had started selling watches with black rubber straps, and the bottle is circled in black rubber, so Black may have started out as a naughty joke in the marketing department. It could have stayed that way had it not fallen upon the ears of one of the greatest perfumers at work today, Annick Ménardeau of Firmenich. She took the rubbery idea, added a cloud of talcum powder and blended the two with a luscious fur-coat structure from the fifties, something like the original Je Reviens. The result is more akin to the black mink mitt James Bond uses to induce beautiful spies to talk in From Russia With Love: a torture instrument, only nobody gets hurt.
When I find myself a captive audience to a busking musician, say in a metro corridor, I apply a simple test to the question of whether to part with money. Get goosebumps ? Give generously. Hairs unmoved ? Walk on blameless. For some reason this shiver test only works with music, but an analogous one exists for fragrance: does a perfume make you smile the first time you smell it ? I was trying to remember when that last happened. There was, of course, the belly laugh of Angel (Mugler), but that was long ago (1992). Then the beatific smile of Beyond Paradise last year. But in between ? Only one, I’m afraid, and that was Bulgari’s Black in 1998. I’ve mentioned this masterpiece before, but a bit more explaining is required.
Years ago I met a Ferrari collector who owned a beautifully cut raincoat made of black inner-tube rubber with flat taped seams like those on an inflatable dinghy. It looked sensational, and smelled even better, of virgin tires and baby powder. I trespassed and asked him where he had bought it: "a London tailor" he said haughtily, but he was tight-lipped about details. Years later, I understood why: this thing came not from Savile Row, but from a more specialized sort of shop found in Soho. For years I would occasionally nip into the largest one, on Old Compton Street, to smell the rubber underwear hanging on the racks, under the indifferent eye of the staff for whom this ranked as a minor affliction.
Since Black you can take that smell home with you without having to hide it from your mom under a pile of cardigans. I have no idea how the idea came about, but at about the same time Bulgari had started selling watches with black rubber straps, and the bottle is circled in black rubber, so Black may have started out as a naughty joke in the marketing department. It could have stayed that way had it not fallen upon the ears of one of the greatest perfumers at work today, Annick Ménardeau of Firmenich. She took the rubbery idea, added a cloud of talcum powder and blended the two with a luscious fur-coat structure from the fifties, something like the original Je Reviens. The result is more akin to the black mink mitt James Bond uses to induce beautiful spies to talk in From Russia With Love: a torture instrument, only nobody gets hurt.
June 1, 2004
"An old flame" By Luca Turin
"An old flame" By Luca Turin
One day in 1982 there appeared out of nowhere, on the perfume floor of my local Galeries Lafayette, a shining black monolith displaying a new perfume called Nombre Noir, made by Shiseido and signed SL, the initials of its mysterious creator Serge Lutens. I asked to smell it and my life was altered forever. Had this perfume spoken, as objects do all the time in Alice in Wonderland and less frequently in reality, it would not have said: "Give me to your girlfriend" but" Ditch her now and run off with me". In the event, I started a discreet ménage à trois. When a few years later we split up, the perfume stayed with her. By then Nombre Noir had vanished, having earned the then-rare distinction of being found allergenic and subsequently banned.
I spent the next decade looking for it in widening circles, first scouring old perfumeries, then asking other collectors, then trying specialist stores (the biggest one is at the intersection of I-95 and 270 in Eastern North Carolina), finally the Web, all to no avail. Last year, during a drunken dinner with a fellow perfume journalist, it emerged that she had on her shelf a full atomizer of the eau de toilette and did not think much of it. She offered to trade it against something in my possession which she had always wanted, a pristine ounce of Coty’s Chypre, not the 1917 marvel but a passable 1960’s version. We swapped obsessions, and I was at last able to gaze again upon that wonderful face.
Nostalgic encounters are fraught with danger. Nombre Noir was still beautiful, God knows, and I could see what I had loved, a sort of playful fierceness unequalled in fragrance before or since, but I was no longer in thrall. Egged on by the cruelty that makes us dismember what we cannot truly love, I sent it off for analysis. When I read the list of ingredients with their proportions, I felt as Röntgen must have done when he first saw the bones in his wife’s hand: no longer the beautiful, but the sublime. At Nombre Noir’s core, a quartet of resplendent woody-rosy damascones, synthetics first found in rose oil forty years ago. They break down in sunlight, hence the nastiness. But the secret was a huge slug of hedione, a quiet, unassuming chemical that no-one noticed until Edmond Roudnitska showed with Eau Sauvage (1966) that its magic kiss could put back the dew on dry flowers. Knowledge may be power, but power is not love.
One day in 1982 there appeared out of nowhere, on the perfume floor of my local Galeries Lafayette, a shining black monolith displaying a new perfume called Nombre Noir, made by Shiseido and signed SL, the initials of its mysterious creator Serge Lutens. I asked to smell it and my life was altered forever. Had this perfume spoken, as objects do all the time in Alice in Wonderland and less frequently in reality, it would not have said: "Give me to your girlfriend" but" Ditch her now and run off with me". In the event, I started a discreet ménage à trois. When a few years later we split up, the perfume stayed with her. By then Nombre Noir had vanished, having earned the then-rare distinction of being found allergenic and subsequently banned.
I spent the next decade looking for it in widening circles, first scouring old perfumeries, then asking other collectors, then trying specialist stores (the biggest one is at the intersection of I-95 and 270 in Eastern North Carolina), finally the Web, all to no avail. Last year, during a drunken dinner with a fellow perfume journalist, it emerged that she had on her shelf a full atomizer of the eau de toilette and did not think much of it. She offered to trade it against something in my possession which she had always wanted, a pristine ounce of Coty’s Chypre, not the 1917 marvel but a passable 1960’s version. We swapped obsessions, and I was at last able to gaze again upon that wonderful face.
Nostalgic encounters are fraught with danger. Nombre Noir was still beautiful, God knows, and I could see what I had loved, a sort of playful fierceness unequalled in fragrance before or since, but I was no longer in thrall. Egged on by the cruelty that makes us dismember what we cannot truly love, I sent it off for analysis. When I read the list of ingredients with their proportions, I felt as Röntgen must have done when he first saw the bones in his wife’s hand: no longer the beautiful, but the sublime. At Nombre Noir’s core, a quartet of resplendent woody-rosy damascones, synthetics first found in rose oil forty years ago. They break down in sunlight, hence the nastiness. But the secret was a huge slug of hedione, a quiet, unassuming chemical that no-one noticed until Edmond Roudnitska showed with Eau Sauvage (1966) that its magic kiss could put back the dew on dry flowers. Knowledge may be power, but power is not love.
May 1, 2004
"The Fall of Guerlain Part II" By Luca Turin
"The Fall of Guerlain Part II" By Luca Turin
A few months ago I had some sharp words to say about the latest Guerlain perfume and about the way this venerable firm was being handled by its new owners LVMH. I really must try to be nasty more often: I since receive one or two lavish packages a month from their PR department. I open them gingerly, but they turn out to contain some harmless bath oil or face powder that I pass on to my kids. The latest one was different: a press pack and samples for the launch of Shalimar Light. For a moment I thought I was stuck on Groundhog Day, since I had already given glowing reviews to this fragrance when it came out same time last year. Launches aren’t cheap, so why have two ? I was so curious I opened the press pack and actually read it.
It explains that "Last year Mathilde Laurent caused real excitement with her vibrant and delicious variation on the original scent" (Shalimar, that is). True: Laurent, the young Guerlain in-house perfumer, has a devoted following, having composed among other things the irresistible Pamplelune and the drop-dead, confidential Guet-Apens (Christmas 1999) a perfume I’d walk barefoot on hot coals for. So what’s new with the new one ? The press release explains that "in 2004 it is Jean-Paul Guerlain who will delight us with his radiant and cheerful rendition". This made my heart sink, because this meant that the original was discontinued. Then I smelled it, and all my worries evaporated with the alcohol on the smelling strip. Jean-Paul Guerlain has paid his junior colleague the ultimate compliment of not messing with her work. The new fragrance is a little brighter up top, a little thinner in the middle, but basically the same perfume, only slightly less good. Even the trusty gas chromatograph that hums away next to my desk gave the same answer when fed both fragrances: close.
Clearly no one is fooled here, least of all the poor souls who had to write the press release: they even prefaced it with a quotation from a Verlaine poem, "The same, and yet somehow different". What’s going on ? I called Guerlain PR and asked why Laurent (currently on maternity leave) was being airbrushed out of the picture. The answer was that the perfume had been "optimized" by Jean-Paul Guerlain. Please optimize it back.
A few months ago I had some sharp words to say about the latest Guerlain perfume and about the way this venerable firm was being handled by its new owners LVMH. I really must try to be nasty more often: I since receive one or two lavish packages a month from their PR department. I open them gingerly, but they turn out to contain some harmless bath oil or face powder that I pass on to my kids. The latest one was different: a press pack and samples for the launch of Shalimar Light. For a moment I thought I was stuck on Groundhog Day, since I had already given glowing reviews to this fragrance when it came out same time last year. Launches aren’t cheap, so why have two ? I was so curious I opened the press pack and actually read it.
It explains that "Last year Mathilde Laurent caused real excitement with her vibrant and delicious variation on the original scent" (Shalimar, that is). True: Laurent, the young Guerlain in-house perfumer, has a devoted following, having composed among other things the irresistible Pamplelune and the drop-dead, confidential Guet-Apens (Christmas 1999) a perfume I’d walk barefoot on hot coals for. So what’s new with the new one ? The press release explains that "in 2004 it is Jean-Paul Guerlain who will delight us with his radiant and cheerful rendition". This made my heart sink, because this meant that the original was discontinued. Then I smelled it, and all my worries evaporated with the alcohol on the smelling strip. Jean-Paul Guerlain has paid his junior colleague the ultimate compliment of not messing with her work. The new fragrance is a little brighter up top, a little thinner in the middle, but basically the same perfume, only slightly less good. Even the trusty gas chromatograph that hums away next to my desk gave the same answer when fed both fragrances: close.
Clearly no one is fooled here, least of all the poor souls who had to write the press release: they even prefaced it with a quotation from a Verlaine poem, "The same, and yet somehow different". What’s going on ? I called Guerlain PR and asked why Laurent (currently on maternity leave) was being airbrushed out of the picture. The answer was that the perfume had been "optimized" by Jean-Paul Guerlain. Please optimize it back.
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