Don’t forget the online fragrance discounters in your search for the perfect Mother’s Day present — why pay full price when you don’t have to?
Shhhh! Don’t tell, but this is what I got my mom this year: the Jean Patou Joy Parfum Compagnon (above left). Everyone should have a few drops of Joy in extrait, don’t you think? And the 6 ml bottle was only $65 at Parfum1…
In a brightly lit corner of Bergdorf Goodman’s beauty level, an in-house Guerlain boutique showcases the legendary Parisian company’s luxe skincare, its richly colored cosmetics in gleaming golden cases, but above all, its fragrance line. Or perhaps we should say fragrance lines, plural, since the offerings fall into several distinct groups.
In one area of the boutique’s display, the complete L’Art et La Matière series stands in a row; in another, the new Aqua Allegoria scents wait to be tried. Reintroduced fragrances from Guerlain’s archives, including Véga, Sous Le Vent, and Le Mouchoir de Monsieur, rub shoulders with the Parfum versions of classics that never went away, such as L’Heure Bleue, Vol de Nuit, and Nahéma…
Before moving on from yesterday’s discussion of Guerlain Shalimar to its newest offspring, Eau de Shalimar, it is worth taking a moment to consider how Shalimar fares in today’s youth-oriented perfume market:
I thought it smelled very “old lady” and not in a good way.
I get the vision of a bleached blond in mommy jeans who doesnt feel she is worth a nice fragrance.
On my skin, this stuff smells like musty old women.
I don’t smell vanilla, I smell a sour, old-fashioned scent that is a bit putrid.
I love fine french perfumes but this stuff is the essence of old age.
Speaking from my lofty position as a perfumista and a bleached blond in mommy jeans…no, seriously, I’m not quoting those remarks1 in order to elicit an onslaught of holier-than-thou perfumista scorn, but simply to acknowledge the truth: to women raised on Clinique Happy and Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue and whatnot, Shalimar might reasonably be compared to, as another reviewer so delicately put it, vomit…
What follows is not, properly speaking, a review of Guerlain’s Shalimar. Shalimar is so iconic that there isn’t much to be said on the subject that hasn’t already been said, and the only reason I’m writing about it today is that I’m planning to talk about the newest member of the Shalimar family, Eau de Shalimar, tomorrow, and my inner perfume geek insists that I can’t talk about Eau de Shalimar without at least mentioning its parent first.
The oft-told story about Shalimar is that perfumer Jacques Guerlain was messing around with ethyl vanillin, a then-new synthetic vanilla, and he poured some into a bottle of Jicky to see what would happen. Apocryphal or not, the anecdote neatly connects the dots between the dawn of modern perfumery with Jicky in 1889 and the classic fragrances of the 1920s and 1930s…
The 2008 Aqua Allegoria fragrances from Guerlain will be Figue Iris and Laurier Réglisse…