Guerlain is so straight — and obsessed with LOVE — that I often feel I’m reading snippets from a paperback romance novel as I peruse the Guerlain website. Chamade is ‘a surrender to love'. Chant d'Arômes is ‘the most exquisite love token a woman can receive’. Mitsouko was inspired by ‘an impossible passion’. Nahéma represents ‘the duality of woman’…a ‘daughter of fire’. Vol de Nuit? It’s dedicated to a tragic love story (written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) and ‘to women who know how to live with danger’. Even Guerlain men’s colognes are given romantic touches and a female component: Mouchoir de Monsieur conjures a world where men offered ‘a delicately perfumed handkerchief to the woman one loved’. The hokiest Guerlain advertising line concerns L’Instant de Guerlain pour homme: ‘It’s her… He knows it… This is it!’
I don’t think a perfume can ignite passion or love between people, so you’ll find me rolling my eyes or laughing as I read Guerlain perfume ad copy, and Guerlain Jicky’s ‘creation story’ is no exception. Supposedly, Aimé Guerlain, while studying in England as a young man, fell in love with a British girl who he nicknamed “Jicky.” Aimé’s and Jicky’s love was unrequited and Aimé returned to Paris alone and, decades later, created Jicky, the perfume, in honor of his lost love. Another story has Aimé naming the perfume after his favorite nephew, Jacques (“Jicky”) Guerlain — the boy who grew up to create Mitsouko, L’Heure Bleue and Shalimar…