Guerlain Samsara

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Samsara is a lovely Guerlain from 1989. I often think it’s one of the last of the old Guerlain style before the fragrance house underwent their “modernification” and subsequent sale to LVMH. There’s a familiar Guerlainess to Samsara that’s been very toned down for the mass marketed recent fragrances. Samsara

In Bottle: Clear, dense, and woodsy. I can smell a hint of Guerlainess (if it wasn’t before, it is now a word) in this that reminds me of Mitsouko. Strange how so many things Guerlain makes either reminds me of Mitsouko or L’Heure Bleue. They were doing something right, I guess.

Applied: Initial scent reminds me of–and don’t laugh–pickled kumquat. Yes, salty, tart, citrusy pickled kumquat. Strange connection but there you have it. It was made and cannot be taken back now. Anyway, after my awkward experience with the opener, which honestly lasts a couple of seconds, Samsara turns into a smooth, spicy, sandalwood fragrance with a clove underneath. Samsara continues on its woodsy clovey journey picking up faint notes of jasmine here and there and discarding them just as quickly. The iris does make a brief and masked appearance lending the fragrance a sharpness too. The final dry down is a powdery, dry vanilla woodsy fragrance with the clove lingering until everything else is gone.

Extra: The one really great thing about Samsara is its projection. Put some of this on and you will project like crazy. Not quite as far as Shalimar but a pretty respectable distance for sure.

Design: I know some people hate the way this bottle looks. I think it’s okay. Not my favorite, but certainly not my least favorite. It’s got a nice deep redness to it that really reflects well on what kind of fragrance it holds. I like the shape too, easy to hold and easy to spray. flimsy plastic cap though. I really wish Guerlain wouldn’t use those so often these days.

Fragrance Family: Woodsy Oriental

Notes: Jasmine, ylang-ylang, jasmine, sandalwood, narcissus, tonka, iris, vanilla.

Apparently, once upon a time, Samsara used to include real Mysore Sandalwood. Sandalwood being a lovely smelling tree that’s been harvested so much that it’s now endangered. The sandalwood you encounter in perfumes? Most likely a synthetic from one of two very popular sandalwood synthetics.

Reviewed in This Post: Samsara, 2009, Eau de Parfum.

Guerlain My Insolence

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Seems the Insolence family is working up to its name, or something because everyone seems to have a polarized opinion of each of them. My Insolence is Insolence’s less confused daughter. She knows she’s typical, mass marketed, a little confused, and not one bit special. And she’s just okay with that. My Insolence

In Bottle: Fruity, sweet raspberry top note with a very typical jasmine wafting up from the regions of mid-stage fragrance world. My Insolence, unlike the original that it flanks is a clearly defined fruity floral fragrance that could pretty much smell like any other recent release out there. So you’re at least guaranteed that she smells nice.

Applied: Sweet and fruity raspberry with a nice almond note thrown in there to give the blend some more sweetness and a little bit of nuttiness. I do detect a little early entry of the patchouli in this giving My Insolence a nice sharp, clean quality. There’s the jasmine coming up after the opener to give this a nice white floral edge as the fragrance settles on a pleasant and warm raspberry, almond near-gourmand fragrance. The dry down is equally pleasant with a touch more complexity than one would expect with patchouli cleaning up the joint and giving it a slight bitterness as vanilla ushers out My Insolence on a creamy, mild note.

Extra: Nothing much I can really say for or against My Insolence except that it’s highly wearable, very inoffensive and kind of typical. Not at all what I expected of the house that made Jicky and Mitsouko. But then as Guerlain themselves admitted, they needed to appeal to the younger market and My Insolence is about as appealing as a modern fragrance needs to be. I just wonder if the target audience is wearing it.

Design: My Insolence is packaged in much the same way as Insolence was. In that hard to hold, interesting to look at flower and flower pot bottle. At least that flower and flower pot concept is what I got from this.

Fragrance Family: Fruity

Notes: Raspberry, almond blossom, jasmine, patchouli, vanilla, tonka bean.

I’m somewhat sad that Insolence itself hit it off badly with me but My Insolence is a nice enough contender with an almost gourmand reach with that vanilla and almond treatment. If you tried Insolence looking for a young Guerlain and didn’t like it, give My Insolence a chance.

Reviewed in This Post: My Insolence, 2009, Eau de Parfum.

Guerlain Insolence

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Insolence is one of those modern Guerlains that was a hit or a miss. It seems to have more hits than misses than say–Champs-Elysees–but it has more interesting character to it taking it beyond the safe zone that Guerlain seems to have been skirting since its purchase by LVMH. Insolence

In Bottle: Yeah, definitely unique. The violet in this is a strange, uncertain floral that’s sweet for sure but lacks anything else to it. There’s something spicy in this too like anise or cinnamon along with the weird sugary, raisin scent in the back.

Applied: Sweet and bright with the red raspberry note coming up first and fading first leaving me with a dense, syrupy raisin-like fragrance with that persistent anise note that I wish I didn’t feel crazy for smelling.  Something in this reminds me of the classic Guerlains. I’m thinking it’s that anise or clove or whatever the heck that is which reminds me a bit of one of L’Huere Bleue’s many layers. But at the same time it’s clear Insolence is an updated fragrance meant for a young consumer as it’s trying to pull in a fresher audience. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if they really hit the mark as Insolence is not clearly defined as anything and at the end of the day, does smell like a bit of a fruity, floral, spicy and sweet mess to me. I’m sure a lot of women can love this fragrance but it is very polarized in terms of taste. You can either love it or hate it. Once Insolence does calm down, which takes quite a while, the fragrance is less sweet but it does retain some of that syrupy treatment all the way into the dry down where it gets darker, creamier, and more vanillic with a very nice red raspberry note to it. I had thought the raspberry had disappeared but it was just hiding behind the spicy flowers. As for whether I hate or love this? I could go either way but I feel like Insolence is a bit too loud and sweet and a little too clingy.

Extra: Word has it that this smells a bit like Apres L’Ondee, one of the Guerlains I have yet to try. I do get the familiarity of this to L’Huere Bleue so something in here is working that classic machine. I just think this is a bit removed from that era though.

Design: Insolence’s half-circle, flower and flower pot type design was by Serge Mansau a man famous for creating bottles for some of the most well known fashion and fragrance houses since the 60s. I gotta give the man credit for making this a nice looking bottle that’s interesting to look at. I just can’t get on board with how hard it is to hold this thing. It’s an awkward shape, making you have to hold it awkwardly, pinched between your fingers as you hope to avoid dropping it. Nice idea, interesting shape. I just can’t get on board with how hard it is to hold.

Fragrance Family: Spicy Sweet Oriental

Notes: Violet, raspberry, rose, orange blossom, raisins, balsam, iris, tonka bean.

You’re probably wondering what kind of fragrance family cop-out I’m doing with that spicy sweet thing. Well, it’s the only way I can really describe Insolence because, to my nose, it’s like a candy rolled in anise. It tries to be fruity, it tries to be gourmand, but it lands in the middle where it’s neither and the only place it even fits is in two vague categories.

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

Guerlain Shalimar

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At long last I’ve come to appreciate Shalimar and truly understand her. I knew for years that there must be a reason for why people love Shalimar so much that I’m just not seeing. I kept reading on about how the dry down is this rich, deep, sensual vanilla but the top notes just turned me away. Then I decided to hell with it, and needed to see what I was missing for myself. And now, I think I’ve finally got it. k5f2jcs0

In Bottle: Smoky, slightly sweet and very spicy. Like taking in a lungful of cigar smoke. The bottle phase of Shalimar is excellent at hiding the vanilla deep in a hole somewhere and it’s just begging for you to come dig it up. To be completely honest, I am not wild about how Shalimar smells in the bottle or off-skin. It was the major thing holding me back for years from actually trying it on. And let me just say, Shalimar is strong. It’s not the kind of fragrance that sneaks into a scene and sits behind everyone else and stays quiet. Shalimar’s best trait is its projection. You don’t wear Shalimar to blend in with people. You wear it because you want your presence to be known. In short, it is powerful.

Applied: Initial burst of citrus, bergamot and lemon at work I’m thinking, but it’s very quick to go away. There’s cloves in this that lend to its spiciness. To me, cloves have this slightly plastic quality to it. But, hey, I’m warming up to them. As the initial lemon and clove notes starts to dry down I get more smoky sweetness from Shalimar as it leads me into the much raved about vanilla phase. The final vanilla phase for me is not what would be expected of vanilla. These days, people think sweet and gourmand when they hear vanilla. The vanilla in Shalimar is an incense laden, smooth, and dense smoked vanilla layered over powder. I know Shalimar is a classic. I’ve always known it was to be respected but up until now, I only respected it from afar. This is one perfume that needs to be allowed to age as its dry down is simply masterful.

Extra: Launched in 1925, Shalimar was the trademark of the daring, sensual woman. Shalimar, in Sanskrit means “Temple of Love”. Shalimar has a somewhat mixed reception these days. As more often than not, people opt for lighter, cleaner fragrances. As a result, Shalimar’s been called a lot of names. “Old lady” is one of the predominant criticisms. And “too strong” is another. It’s true, Shalimar is an old lady. It’s a classic, beautiful, timeless old lady. It’s also true that Shalimar is too strong. It has tremendous projection and is inappropriate for the office, public transit, and dinner parties held in close quarters. Like I said, this scent projects like mad. You need to pick the right places to wear it because it won’t go on lightly.

Design: Shalimar’s most well-known classic design inspired the current modern version. The classic design was based on the shape of a fan. A very romantic, lovely piece of art and design history. The modern design, though modern and hip, has lost quite a bit of that romantic and classic look. I prefer the old design. This new one isn’t bad, of course, but it feels a little mismatched for a classic fragrance so well-loved and well-known. As if the modern version was trying to take it away from the 1920s when it was born. The version I have comes in a clear glass bottle in the modern style. It has a plastic cap with “Guerlain Paris” written on it.

Fragrance Family: Oriental

Notes: Bergamot, cloves, smoke, iris, opopanax, vanilla.

All right, I fully admit my embarrassingly slow warm up to Shalimar. I think some people need to work up to this fragrance. Try it out enough times before they finally get it. I hear the same could be said for Jicky. Jicky being one of the Guerlain classics I’m really hesitant to try due to its infamously civet treatment. Ah well, Shalimar today and now that I finally understand her, it’s time to hunt down Vol de Nuit, Habit Rouge and Apres L’Ondee.

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

Guerlain Champs-Elysees 1996

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Champs-Elysees 1996, not to be confused with the classic Parfum des Champs-Elysees from 1904, is one of Guerlain’s more controversial moderns. There are people who love it and people who loathe it. I can’t help but think that those who loathe it, hate it because they expected 1904’s Champs-Elysees to make a comeback and instead got something completely different. Champs-Elysees

In Bottle: Sharp, sweet mimosa. Faintly powdery with a white floral background. I don’t mean background as in base note. I mean background as in, imagine this fragrance is a stage. The actors are the sweet mimosa. The background is this thick, lush wall of white florals. That is Champs-Elysees, clean, sweet, sharp, powdery and utterly, unapologetically floral.

Applied: Mimosa is a major player but it’s battling it out for that lush curtain of florals. I get a bit more almond on application than off. Champs-Elysees reminds me of soap. It’s clean and bright and sweet like a lush bar of luxury soap and a bathtub filled with flowers floating on the surface. This is a white, light, delicate wall of florals fifty feet high. There is little change on dry down for me. The one thing I noticed was an increase in that powdery feel.

Extra: Word on the street has it that Champs-Elysees 1904’s notes may have looked something like this: Bergamot, violet, rose, iris, leather, oakmoss, benzoin, wood. And knowing Guerlain, it was probably laid over that iconic base. I can almost smell it in my mind but that is a pretty silly notion. The original was bottled in a beautiful turtle-like design. It’s really too bad the 1904 version and its re-issue is super rare and also super expensive (almost $14,000!). I want to have a sniff.

Design: Champs-Elysees 1996 is bottled in a pleasing, rather geometric bottle. What takes away from it most is the square wedge at the base of the bottle used to keep it standing. Otherwise, it is an interesting shape and would have been better had its physics allowed it to stand without that jerry-rigged bit at the bottom. Nevertheless, the bottle is easy to hold. The cap is plastic. The sprayer works just fine.

Fragrance Family: Fresh Floral

Notes: Mimosa, almond blossom, rose, buddleia, hibiscus, almond wood.

Poor Champs-Elysees 1996. I feel bad for it. It’s truly a very nice, modern, powdery white floral with sweet notes making it ultra-feminine. I wish more people liked it but I certainly understand the frustration. I do wonder if Champs-Elysees went by any other name it would catch less flack. It wouldn’t please those who currently dislike it but at least it wouldn’t disappoint in addition to being displeasing.

Reviewed in This Post: Champs-Elysees, 2009, Eau de Toilette.

Guerlain L’Heure Bleue

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Another Guerlain Classic, L’Heure Bleue was created in 1912 with a little story about the inspiration behind L’Heure Bleue. Even though the story came to be a while after the fragrance did.

L’Heure Bleue, being an old classic of the Guerlain classics family finds its niche in such greats as Shalimar, Jicky, and Mitsouko. It has that definitive Guerlain base to it that makes fragrance lovers–well, anyone who’s smelled more than one classic Guerlain–instantly know where it’s coming from and what levels of history they can expect. L'Heure Bleue

In Bottle: That Guerlain signature scent is present in pretty much every classic they’ve put out. Though the base is a bit masked in the newer creations, it is the base that sets the stage for the old perfumes. L’Heure Bleue is no different. I get the base immediately, followed by neroli’s powerful presence, and the spiciness of carnation.

Applied: The base is the first to fade to the background but it never goes away. Neroli is up front and center followed by the spiciness of carnation. It’s strange how a fragrance can make one feel warm or cold. L’Heure Bleue feels cold. It’s a reflection of its namesake, the twilight hour when the land is coated in blue. The name itself is a dead giveaway, L’Heure Bleue translated to “Blue Hour”. And like most classic fragrances, I often have a hard time deconstructing them because they’re blended to discourage deconstruction. I can only get the feeling and have this mental block telling me that’s silly to try to describe it beyond that. So what I can say of this experience is that this starts off as a chilly citrus. It maintains the chilliness as the citrus melts away into a very classic fragrance with dominant notes of neroli, carnation, and a vanilla base that’s barely detectable.

Extra: One thing I’ve noticed with most people’s reactions to L’Heure Bleue is the aversion to a particular note. L’Heure Bleue, more so than other classics, is referred to as an “old lady perfume”. There’s a correlation there, I think. In particular, the neroli note derived from the bitter orange tree. To me, it smells extremely similar to the more acceptable, bergamot. By the way, wondering how to pronounce this? Here you go:  L’Heure Bleue (Lehr Bloo).

Design: The bottle of L’Heure Bleue I own is nearly as small as Mitsouko but I do own more of this juice. I find it more wearable than Mitsouko, personally. Even though some people would try to tell me I smell like an old lady. The bottle really is very similar and quite frankly, there’s not a whole lot to say beyond that. Mitsouko is a slightly greener, cooler color whereas, L’Heure Bleue (funny enough) is a warmer color. I find the bottle design to be more fitting for Mitsouko but I still appreciate the elements of it.

Fragrance Family: Floral Oriental

Notes: Bergamot, neroli, clove, jasmine, carnation, cedar, musk, vanilla.

Slowly working my way up to Shalimar whose initial burst still puts me off and it is the initial burst in that one that does it. I’m sure she’s beautiful once she settles down. In the mean time, I’ve got L’Heure Bleue, a fun fragrance to say and a beautiful, grown-up classic.

Reviewed in This Post: L’Heure Bleue, 2007, Eau de Toilette.

L’Instant de Guerlain

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L’Instant’s one of those weird anomalies that give me a hard time when it comes to finding and purchasing it. Eventually I broke down, having looked for months with it eluding me, and dropped full price on a bottle. It felt ridiculous at the time that a very recent, rather popular fragrance like this, could be out or not stocked everywhere I looked.

I can see what some Guerlain fans can love about L’Instant. For one, it’s not the dreaded mix of fruits and florals in a bottle. Heaven forbid. L'Instant

In Bottle: Rich, sweet honey with a resiny background. It is almost a gourmand but the floral note in this is preventing it from getting there. The magnolia lends it a bit of powder to prevent the honey and amber from turning into a honeyed cream scent which would land it in gourmand territory for me.

Applied: Honey amps up immediately with this slightly sharp sting of citrus. The magnolias are creating this very fine sweetened floral fragrance a few moments later. The floral aspect does a good job working with the sweetness. I’m no longer detecting powder and there’s less and less of it as the magnolia fades away and the amber gets stronger. Once again L’Instant is skirting the gourmand line as it warms up from the initial blast of citrus. In the end, L’Instant goes out smelling like warm, sweet, golden amber.

Extra: Resins and resinous notes can include amber, labdanum, ambergris, frankincense, myrrh, benzoin, etc.

Design: Nicely shaped rounded corner bottle with slightly purple tinged clear glass showing off the light amber juice inside. The cap on the bottle I have has a nice weight to it unlike the flighty, flimsy clear plastic deals on the other Guerlains I own. I wish they would go with this denser feeling cap more often. It looks better, feels better, and helps class up the project.

Fragrance Family: Oriental

Notes: Citrus, honey, magnolia, golden amber.

It was a bit difficult choosing which way to go on this fragrance. To me, it is really close to being a gourmand despite having only one gourmand-esq note in it. Had the amber been vanilla this wouldn’t have been so hard. In the end I stuck to the safe bet as L’Instant does have the amber necessary and does have that thick, resinous golden base to it that could label it as an oriental even though it doesn’t truly slot itself neatly there either. See, people say oriental and I think resins and dark musky scents.  There’s no dark musk in L’Instant. In the end, I hate agonizing over something that’s essentially my opinion anyway so you get oriental.

Reviewed in This Post: L’Instant, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

Guerlain Mitsouko

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I don’t think highly enough of myself to kick off this blog with a review of a Guerlain classic because I feel I’m particularly versed in olfactory luxuries. I just wanted start with a relatively agreed upon fragrance. A classic, in other words, where so many others have said what needed to be said and I’m just filling in an already overflowing gap.

Mitsouko is Guerlain’s 1919 debut girl. Formulated by Jacques Guerlain with a following that describes her with such words as deep, sensual, sophisticated, and mysterious.Mitsouko

In Bottle: The fragrance is so well blended that I have a hard time picking out any specific notes. This is not a bad thing as it means Mitsouko has that unique quality. She smells like something never smelled before. I immediately associate her with with the word ‘classic’ and ‘old world’. Old world being a very endearing term to me, of course.  It’s spicy, it’s woodsy, just a little floral and very lightly fruity, but it’s all of those things at once too. To separate the notes and describe them feels wrong.

Applied: Mitsouko’s initial application is a burst of complex florals and soft woodsy notes. In a manner of seconds, as if she shed her flower coat as she drifted from the air onto skin, Mitsouko begins to deepen. The woods and spices come up creating this miasma of scent that makes me think darkness, headiness, and shadows drifting in and out of a sunless forest. As she dries the woods and moss come up more, blending with the spices as the components practically meld together. It is easy to forget that this is a fragrance composed of different notes and the fruitiness that people love in this fragrance is the softening agent used to tame rather than dominate. It’s hard to separate the notes and what’s left is just Mitsouko as a whole.

Extra: So it is said that Guerlain’s Mitsouko is a homage to many things, the name, the novel, the woman herself. Most people seem to subscribe to the theory that Guerlain based Mitsouko on the novel, La Bataille by Claude Farrčre. Where the novel is now difficult to find, at least for an English speaker with no foothold in French, the fragrance lives on in those who continue to love her.

Design: Mitsouko’s bottle design, I suspect, is supposed to reflect its scent and the artistry of the time. It looks and feels like a piece of design history. It’s a piece that, to me, reflects the orientalism of the fragrance and while art and design has since evolved into abstract shapes, clean and sharp lines, with flowing bulbous nodes of color bold against white, Mitsouko’s bottle design is an echo from an era gone but never forgotten. The one thing about my bottle I dislike is the plastic cap which seems to be on par for most recent Guerlains. I would have liked for them to invest in some nicer caps but you can’t have it all.

Fragrance Family: Oriental Chypre

Notes: Citrus, rose, peach, clove, pepper, spices, oakmoss and woods.

I believe a modern fragrance lover, and I wholly admit myself as a rotten, no-good, fruity-floral loving modernist, would find it difficult to like Mitsouko. But liking and respecting are two different things to me. I own a bottle of Mitsouko, a small one, for the simple fact that it is a piece of fragrance history. Once in a while I’ll bring her out and try to analyze  the complexities of her nature and to assuage my guilt of not warming up to Shalimar yet (I’m getting there). I find her too deep for normal wear as the people I’m around most often tend to react poorly to her. It’s not their fault, and it’s not Mitsouko’s fault either. Mitsouko is to be appreciated for sure as one of those classics you’ve just got to try at least once because reviews just don’t do her justice. As for wearing her? That depends on what you like.

Reviewed in This Post: Mitsouko, circa 2008, Eau de Toilette.