Guerlain Eau de Fleurs de Cedrat

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Eau de Fleurs de Cédrat is probably one of my favorite Guerlain fragrances. So it’s a good bit of fortune that I came upon it recently at La Signature at Disney Epcot in Florida. Eau de Fleurs de Cédrat is a classic from 1920 that is available at better stocked Guerlain counters, but more exclusively than Shalimar. Nothing wrong with you, Shalimar.  I just see you everywhere. Eau de Fleurs de Cedrat

In Bottle: Lemons! I hope you like lemons because Eau de Fleurs de Cédrat is a big lemon tree. Green and crisp and citrus and fresh. Lacking the notable Guerlain base but still so lovely all the same.

Applied: Sweet lemon candy is a strange introduction into Eau de Fleurs de Cédrat but it’s a welcome one as the fragrance matures immediately into a cool lemon. As this is a pretty simple mixture with low concentration Eau de Fleurs de Cédrat is a fleeting scent, even on clothing. It’s even more fleeting on the skin. After the lemon candy dissolves a bit, the lemon dominates the scene and an hour later, you’re left with a soft light, floral quality that’s just barely there and extremely fleeting. Don’t wear this if you want longevity. This fragrance has no base stage and I hesitate to say it may not have much of a mid-stage either. Wear if you want a quick fresh burst of fragrance from a sophisticated lemon-like note. I’ve had trouble with lemon notes in other fragrances so I was pleased to note that cedrat is not lemon necessarily but a close relative that smells much better on me. The cedrat in Eau de Fleurs de Cédrat is a lovely, soft, crisp little thing that won’t overstay its welcome or yell the entire time it’s there.

Extra: Eau de Fleurs de Cédrat is pretty much what its name suggestions. It’s a flower and citron. It’s not trying to be anything else and if you do expect more complexity, this isn’t the place to look. The cedrat is similar to a lemon but has an icy and more candy-like fragrance. It smells remarkably similar to a lemon, but in a fragrance it couldn’t behave more differently.

Design: Eau de Fleurs de Cédrat comes in a bee bottle design as a 100ml bottle. Lovely molded glass with bee designs on the glass itself. It both looks and feels luxurious , which is why I adore the bee bottles so much.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Citrus

Notes: Citron, white florals.

La Signature, also known by many Epcot patrons as, “That store that sells really expensive French perfume that I’ve never heard of”, is probably the best place to go–short of Paris–for a big selection of Guerlain fragrances and their cosmetics line. I don’t  use their cosmetics but the amount of Guerlain perfumes they’ve got there is fantastic.

Reviewed in This Post: Eau de Fleurs de Cédrat, circa 2008, Eau de Cologne.

Guerlain Cruel Gardenia

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More hits from Guerlain’s exclusive and prestigious l’Art et la Matière line. Cruel Gardenia is one of those gardenia scents that reminds me of Annick Goutal’s Gardenia Passion in that if there is any gardenia in this, I am not smelling it.  Cruel Gardenia

In Bottle: Pretty enough, lightly floral and creamy with slightly powdered underbelly. It smells girly and pretty and delicate like a single flower. That flower isn’t gardenia though.

Applied: After the first application Cruel Gardenia starts to sink into my skin and proceed to disappear without fanfare. Odd experience for me as the first waves of understated fruity florally goodness give way to an airy violets and sweetness floral heart rotating around a lilting vaporous muskiness. Oh, hi, tuberose. I see you’re in on this too. How are you doing? See, Cruel Gardenia is not so much a fragrance about Gardenia as it is dedicated to breezy, clean and girly florals that focus around being pretty to sort of steer me away from the fact that if there’s gardenia in this then there’s very little of it. The fragrance dries down to a pleasant enough lightly floral, creamy but unsweetened dry vanilla.

Extra: The crowd’s still out on the best blended gardenia fragrance but I’m going to have to pass on Cruel Gardenia. There’s not enough in there to really justify this. Certainly not for the price anyway.

Design: Bottled much the same way as Tonka Imperiale, Cruel Gardenia is encased in a lovely rectangular glass bottle and comes with a regular sprayer and a pump atomizer. And like Tonka Imperiale and Spiritueuse Double Vanille, once you install the sprayers onto these bottles you can’t refit them into their original boxes. I am still peeved about that, yes.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Peach, damask rose, neroli, violet, ylang-ylang, white musk, tonka, vanilla,  sandalwood.

Maybe I’m being a bit harsh on these non-gardenia gardenia fragrances but I feel like I’ve been led on a wild goose chase. On the other hand, if you want to buy some fantastic, pure gardenia essential oil, Enfleurage’s looks mighty tempting.

Reviewed in This Post: Cruel Gardenia, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Guerlain Tonka Imperiale

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Guerlain’s L’Art et la Matière line of fragrances celebrating great perfumers and great perfumes. The line has been going for some time now and Tonka Imperiale, as of this writing, is the newest release.Tonka Imperiale

In Bottle: Boozy vanilla with a slight almond edge and sourness. Tonka Imperiale reminds me a lot of Spiritueuse Double Vanille but the major difference is in the sourness. Tonka Imperiale has a sour almond scent to where. Spiritueuse Double Vanille, on the other hand, had smooth smokiness to back it up.

Applied: Vanilla liqueur with that hint of sour again. The sourness is quick to fly away though, leaving me with vanilla, almond and booze. The booze then escapes me leaving me with a lovely rich vanilla and almond scent that signifies the mid-stage of Tonka Imperiale. Lovely spiciness comes in to the join the parade, turning this into full on gourmand as I’m reminded of cookies at Christmas time, very vanilla and decadent rum and spice cookies. The dry down after the Christmas cooking phase is a smoky woodsy fragrance with the beautiful vanilla note hanging on by a thread.

Extra: L’Art et la Matière is Guerlain’s long awaited answer to their lost niche when they were acquied by LVMH. I always felt most of the mainstream Guerlain releases were really pedestrian and lacking that exquisite Guerlainess that defined them so well prior to the acquisition. Though I do like most of their mainstream releases, I am also overjoyed that they’re still putting out stuff like Tonka Imperiale,  Spiritueuse Double Vanille and the other L’Art et la Matière’s scents.  Guerlain’s still got it.

Design: Bottled in a similar shaped presentation as Spiritueuse Double Vanille, Tonka Imperiale has a neater presentation without the big label and the honey bee wax seal. It still comes in that fitted box that you can’t do anything with if you plan on using the fragrance while keeping it in its original box. But, in addition to having a regular sprayer, Tonka Imperial also comes with a pump atomizer.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: : Bergamot, rosemary, tonka bean, honey, spices, almond, jasmine, vanilla, cedar, pine, incense, tobacco and amber.

I really wrestled with wanting a bottle of this and wanting to keep money in my pocket. The L’Art et la Matière line is a few price points above Guerlain’s mainstream releases. It’s even a few price points above some niche houses. At $230 for 75ml, I found the price a bit rich for my tastes. I liked this, but not enough to blow that much on it.

Reviewed in This Post: Tonka Imperiale, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Guerlain Spiritueuse Double Vanille

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Two of the more interesting vanilla based fragrances I’ve ever smelled have been Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille and Spiritueuse Double Vanille. Being a vanilla lover, I wanted something that captured the essence of a really great vanilla. Tobacco Vanille was a nice one. Being more accessible was also a bonus. Then I found a bottle of Spiritueuse Double Vanille kicking around and fell hard for it. Spiritueuse Double Vanille is heralded by many fragrance lovers as the most convincing, the most real vanilla fragrance. And I have to agree. She’s beautiful. Spiritueuse Double Vanille

In Bottle: Smoky sweet vanilla liqueur. Very smooth, extremely pleasant. Reminiscent of Tobacco Vanille but with a nicer, milder, less tobacco interpretation. The smokiness is pretty light in the bottle as Spiritueuse Double Vanille smells mostly boozy.

Applied: Spiritueuse Double Vanille instead opens with a fabulous liqueur reminiscent of bay rum. The vanilla is up front too, smooth and sweet and pure. The smokiness and cedar make the next appearance as Spiritueuse Double Vanille heads toward the spice. This fragrance is golden and warm and has the most utterly pleasant vanilla fragrance I’ve smelled yet. It’s like having a drink, wearing a monocle, smelling a box of cigars and hanging out in your mahogany library. This stuff smells classy. And that vanilla? It’s the kind of vanilla you’ve always wanted in a fragrance but never quite got. It smells like true full-bodied, boozy with a touch of spice vanilla–not that stuff you usually smell that’s sweet, and a little plastic. As the fragrance ages on my skin I get less smokiness and more pepper and more spice. All the while, the vanilla is hanging about lending the fragrance a fabulously smooth and rich treatment.  The mid-stage is like a blend of tobacco, mahogany, vanilla bean, and cedar and it seems to have lost its booziness from earlier. When Spiritueuse Double Vanille dries down, it resembles a pleasant predominant vanilla. Sweet, smooth, sophisticated and utterly beautiful.

Extra: Spiritueuse Double Vanille is a limited edition by Guerlain released in 2007. Jean-Paul Guerlain himself composed this fragrance for the house. I am not clear on whether or not it is still in production but I sure hope so because I believe this one is a definite keeper.

Design: Love the bottle. Thin and rectangular and easy to hold and spray. The details on it are also fantastic, with a wax seal-like design sporting Guerlain’s iconic bee. The major thing I didn’t like was how this was boxed, making it near impossible to both use this regularly and store it in its original packaging. Spiritueuse Double Vanille comes in a fitted box with a travel cap (that’s just a regular screw on cap) and a separate atomizer spray nozzle that you affix onto the bottle yourself. Due to the different heights of the travel cap and the spray nozzle, and the fitted box this fragrance comes in, once you install the atomizer, you can no longer make it fit in its original packaging. Very annoying. So you can’t keep Spiritueuse Double Vanille in its original box and if you’re nuts about keeping your perfumes out of the sunlight and light in general like me, you will have to shove it into a dark corner or drawer and hope the lack of extra protection from the box won’t make that much of a difference.

Fragrance Family: Woodsy Gourmand

Notes: Vanilla, benzoin, frankincense, spices, cedar, pink pepper, bergamot, Bulgarian rose, ylang-ylang.

Guerlain has been using vanilla for so long as a base for its fragrances. So when a house that built its prestigious reputation on vanilla outputs a vanilla fragrance, you better believe I’m going to go smell it. And of course they hit the nail on the head. When I first got into this whole fragrance thing I was afraid of two things. 1) That I would fall in love with a limited edition fragrance. 2) That the fragrance would be expensive. Thanks a lot, Guerlain.

Reviewed in This Post: Spiritueuse Double Vanille, 2007, Eau de Parfum.

Guerlain Idylle

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Idylle was the first mainstream released fragrance by Guerlain’s new in house perfumer, Thierry Wasser. The lack of the Guerlinade is noticeable in this one and in its absence is a fairly plain, fairly boring, modern mainstream scent. Good for wearing, great for the office, but missing the heart of what Guerlain used to be. Idylle

In Bottle: Idylle is a pretty surface floral with a bouquet of pretty young flowers. This scent starts off smelling young and dewy and fresh. It’s reminiscent of pretty much every other modern floral fragrance that’s been released in the last decade.

Applied: I smell Idylle in a lot of places. It’s wearability is outstanding if you’re looking for a modern Guerlain that works well with the modern staple. Don’t look for anything classic smelling in this–it’s not there. I am a little disappointed with the fragrance to be honest because it’s so benign that it’s rather boring. Idylle’s opener smells of rose and lily off the bat. It’s a well blended thing that slips into its mid-stage with so much elegance that you’ll have barely noticed it until you catch the floral heart and realize your fragrance has changed for the better. The rose note is the predominant player in this but it’s a cleaned up, fresh rose. Not at all like Nahema’s deep red rose. Idylle stays beautiful and remains on the skin until the dry down where you’ll get a cleaned up patchouli that smells like scrubbed earth and polished darkness.

Extra: Maybe I’m being harsh on Idylle. It is at it’s core a very pretty and competent fragrance that will please a wide audience. After all, how I can dismiss Idylle when I loved the much loathed Champs Elysees? Or My Insolence? I by no means hate Idylle. I just don’t think it’s particularly interesting. It’s fantastic as a mainstream release. It’s like a more competent Gucci Flora. A more grown up Gucci Flora, if you will. I guess I just miss the classics and was hoping Idylle was a bit more classical and less modern. More niche and less commercial.

Design: Idylle’s marketing surrounded the concept of golden raindrops. The bottle is shaped like a golden raindrop. Despite the interesting shape, it is easy to hold and easy to spray. It looks interesting on display and is a great looking piece to add to a bottle collector’s array.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Lily of the valley, lilac, peony, freesia, jasmine, patchouli, white musk.

Idylle is what the industry refers to as a modern chypre. A formulation that so far has been fuzzy to my understanding.

Reviewed in This Post: Idylle, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Eau de Guerlain

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While known for its deep and rich fragrances back in the day, Guerlain also carries a series of light scents featuring sheer and airy notes mean to go on light and wear like pleasant rain. Eau de Guerlain is one of these such scents. Eau de Guerlain

In Bottle: Beautiful bright lemon, bergamot and herbal scent. So light you would swear this is a modern Guerlain and not one from the 1970s. 1974, to be exact.

Applied: Beautiful lemon opener. Eau de Guerlain does not suffer from the chemical lemon that I experienced in Covet or Versense. This is a nice, background lemon that comes in, does its thing and leaves without fanfare or a fight. Only, it imbues its freshness in the rest of the scent and hangs about as the basil throws in a dash of greenness and herbal. The mid-stage of Eau de Guerlain is a lovely jasmine and rose deal headed by the fresh green basil. Dry down starts with a lovely spicy sandalwood and musk. Eau de Guerlain is a bit of a stretch considering this house was Jicky central. It’s a bit removed from what I’m used to when it comes to pre-1990s Guerlains but it is lovely, fresh, very wearable. One of the nicest, complex, fresh fragrances ever.

Extra: If you’re looking for a spicy fresh scent and have some money to drop, Eau de Guerlain is a very worthwhile fragrance. It’s deceptively simple at first but has a very beautiful mid and dry down stage that you just can’t find with today’s spicy, woodsy sports scents.

Design: The tester I used was presented in a Guerlain bee bottle. I just don’t get tired of looking at these and want to own one very badly. The Aqua Allegorias do a throwback to this style of bottle and I absolutely love the distinctive look of them. The glass has raised details in it making it fun to both look at and hold.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Aromatic

Notes: : Lemon, verbena, bergamot, neroli, carnation, sandalwood, tonka bean.

The more I sniff this on the tester strip, the more interesting it seems to get. Certainly more interesting than Light Blue Pour Homme. There’s just something that makes Eau de Guerlain unique that I can’t quite put my finger on.

Reviewed in This Post: Eau de Guerlain, 2008, Eau de Toilette.

Guerlain Nahema

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Released in 1979, Nahéma is like an ode to the rose. Nahéma is a rose explosion that calls up the vision of what a rose is supposed to be. Nahema

In Bottle: Lush rose in that familiar Guerlain smell. Beautifully dense and musky delicate roses. So sweet that for a moment I’m thinking I smell cherry or anise instead but it’s all rose from here.

Applied: Big and fantastic and familiar. The rose goes on strong, comes out of the gates yelling and makes itself known. This is what a rose is supposed to smell like. A little sweet, a little floral, clean and dewy. Tea rose is what I’m smelling, and tea rose to me has a lighter, sweeter fragrance often used as a subtle addition but in Nahéma is the primary focus. I get roses for hours and hours as Nahéma has some fantastic staying power. The dry down is a lovely sweet rose on woodsy base and that familiar Guerlain scent.

Extra: Apparently, Luca Turin in The Guide shares with us a little rumor. That Nahéma, the greatest rose fragrance in perfumery, was made without any rose oil.

Design: The image in this post is not the bottle design that I’m talking about in this section. The modern Nahéma bottle that I held and sprayed is a mostly flat, rather boring bottle design whose shape is reminiscent of Tommy Girl except lacking that third dimension. It’s dull, drab and uninteresting and I wish they hadn’t changed it from the old bottle. But the bottle certainly is functional at least.

Fragrance Family: Soliflore Oriental

Notes: Rose, peach, vanilla, woods.

Even if you hate roses I highly recommend giving this a sniff. If not so you can find the perfect perfume but to know what conceptual rose smells like. If the rumor is true, that Nahéma doesn’t contain any actual rose oil then the mind-boggling alone is worth a smell.

Reviewed in This Post: Nahéma, 2003, Eau de Parfum.

Guerlain Vol de Nuit

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Much raved about by fragrance lovers, I had this on my list to smell and try for a very long time. When I did spot it at a counter as a tester, I wasted no time making a beeline for it. Excited as I spritzed it, stuck my nose it, slapped it on my skin and then stuck my nose in again, I was hoping for the shapely beauty of Mitsouko. Or the chilly distant wonder of L’Heure Bleue. What I got was a little disappointing. And I say that as I don my metal armor and prepare for the angry mob. Vol de Nuit

In Bottle: That lovely, iconic Guerlain base that defines all the classics shoots Vol de Nuit into heavy hitters category immediately. Though after the guerlainess makes its way through my nose, Vol de Nuit’s underlying personality seems a bit weak. A little big of bergamot. A little bit of spices. Not what I expected from a fragrance that was so well loved.

Applied: Lovely little opener with the guerlainess leading the way for bergamot to flare and dissolve, leaving a little trace of it behind for the rest of the fragrance. Vol de Nuit is a gentle waft of spices, woods, and florals. It’s green ivy and dense flowers on a bed of soft spices. It smells–kind of ordinary. I expected great things from this fragrance. Things so great that it couldn’t possibly have fulfilled. Perhaps I read so much hype that it’s gone to my head and I wanted laser beams and dinosaurs when all Vol de Nuit had to offer me was pleasant featurette. Vol de Nuit is lovely, for sure. It’s more complex than something made these days but I also expected it to be so much more than this. When the dry down approaches, Vol de Nuit turns into a dense, dark woodsy vanilla spice before fading completely. Very nice. Very much Guerlain. Vol de Nuit still blows most modern fragrances out of the water. But I guess I was just expecting more, especially if you slot it in with the other classics.

Extra: Vol de Nuit is a true Guerlain classic of the likes of Shalimar and Jicky. It was released in 1933 and composed by Jacques Guerlain.

Design: I love Vol de Nuit’s bottle. Colored glass with recessed patterns in the shape of a belt buckle. An interesting circle with the fragrance’s name. Reminds me of Art Deco and the days gone by when the women were like columns and the men wore fedoras.

Fragrance Family: Oriental

Notes: Hesperedic notes, narcissus., galbanum, oakmoss, woods, iris, vanilla, spices.

Since you’ve probably seen it listed a lot and likely wondered what it means, hesperedic notes are scents reminiscent of florals mixed with citrus peels such as orange, lemon and tangerine. Also you can bet your horses that oakmoss note is either synthetic or has been formulated out. If it hasn’t, I would be shocked and fully expecting it to be phased out soon.

Reviewed in This Post: Vol de Nuit, 2009, Eau de Toilette.

Guerlain Habit Rouge

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Sometimes when people hear a woman admit she’s wearing a men’s fragrance they act surprised. Like it’s a scandal to wear a men’s fragrance. And don’t even start on how people react if you’re a man admitting you’re wearing a women’s fragrance. The truth is, perfumes aren’t constrained by gender. Though some perfumes can be construed as feminine or masculine. The final say on the matter always ends with the individual. If you like it–just wear it. Habit Rouge is one such fragrance where if you like it then just wear it. Habit Rouge

In Bottle: Musky citrus as the opener. After over a month of smelling safe modern fragrances, I was ready for this. Already I can detect the minor Guerlainess in the fragrance as the musk insists that I test this on.

Applied: Citrus opens with a brilliant brightness. I know the version of Habit Rouge I’m smelling is not the same well-loved one that came out in 1965 but it is still a complex and extremely likable fragrance. The best part comes after the citrus as Habit Rogue morphs into a strong but not overpowering sandalwood and floral. The cinnamon in this pops in and out of the picture and continues to do this even during the dry down. The vanilla peeks in on the dry down when Habit Rogue decides that it’s time to go. Along with the vanilla something dense and leathery ushers on in as the fragrance takes a turn for the smoky vanilla and leather darkness that signals its final curtain call. Try and find a scent like this in the recent releases from mainstream houses and you may find it difficult. Habit Rogue remains beautiful even through its reformulations.

Extra: Commonly marketed and considered a men’s fragrance, Habit Rouge, to me is actually more of a unisex scent. It has a slight sweetness to it though its dry down is masculine, its opener is unisex, its heart is feminine. If you wanted a full on masculine scent, look elsewhere. If you want a beautiful unisex fragrance that’s stood the test of time, Habit Rouge it up.

Design: The eau de toilette version, which is the one I tested is a very simple design. Glass rectangular bottle. Red label, metal and plastic cap. Nothing fancy, nothing over the top. I would have loved to see what the other versions were designed like but the EDT packaging was pleasant enough. No frills, no bells and whistles or gimmicks. I like it that way.

Fragrance Family: Oriental

Notes: Bergamot, lemon, rosewood, basil, pimento, sandal, carnation, patchouli, cedar, rose, cinnamon, vanilla, amber, moss, leather, benzoin, labdanum, olibanum .

I had been chasing this one for a while, knowing that’s lovely. It’s dry down reminds me a bit of Shalimar but is a bit grittier and animalistic. It’s the leather, I think.

Reviewed in This Post: Habit Rogue, 2009, Eau de Toilette.

Guerlain AA: Flora Nymphea

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In and around the time Guerlain decided the status quo was not filling their coffers, they decided to output the Aqua Allegoria (abbreviated AA above) line of fragrances. These were simple, non-complex compositions of scents meant to draw in tentative consumers new to the Guerlain line and be evocative of nature. The philosophy behind Aqua Allegoria was to pump these things out and if a fragrance didn’t sell well, it would disappear. Flora Nymphea

In Bottle: Flora Nymphea is a light floral expression of a fragrance that reminds me quite a bit of my laundry detergent (Tide). It’s the light, inoffensive blend of generic florals that shouts clean and fresh! A pleasant deviation from Guerlains past.

Applied: Flora Nymphea is the embodiment of light, inoffensive floral. If you wanted a floral fragrance but you hate it when florals are heady then shack yourself up with some of this. It starts off with a bright citrus then mellows out into a sweet golden, floral scent with a slight green edge. The dry down is a soft, airy woodsy musk with a sheer layer of flowers.

Extra: Flora Nymphea is the newest member of the surviving Aqua Allegorias. Over the years, Guerlain’s made quite a few of these and only five are in rotation in 2010. The rest you will have to buy secondhand or from old stock because they have been cycled out of production. The surviving members are Pamplelune, Herba Fresca, Flora Nymphea, Mandarine Basilic, and Tiare Mimosa.

Design: I love the Aqua Allegoria line because they are bottled in Guerlain’s signature bee style. While it’s not exactly a close replica of vintage Guerlain bee bottles, the Aqua Allegorias do a very nice throw back to their roots. Glass with a metal honeycomb mesh over the top. The top of the metal cap has a bee embossed onto it. Lining these things up in a row is delightful because they are quite beautifully designed.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Syringa flower, orange blossom, beneficial honey.

Of all the Aqua Allegorias, Pamplelune holds a special place. I could do with or without Flora Nymphea as it is a pretty generic, inoffensive floral fragrance.

Reviewed in This Post: Flora Nymphea, 2010, Eau de Toilette.