Guerlain will launch Idylle Duet in February. The new limited edition fragrance for women is a flanker to 2009’s Guerlain Idylle, and is named for its focus on two notes, rose and patchouli…
Guerlain Shalimar Ode a la Vanille ~ fragrance review
I had little hope Guerlain Shalimar Ode à la Vanille would be a good perfume. Ode à la Vanille PR didn’t stress the fragrance but the Jade Jagger redesign of the Shalimar bottle, which Guerlain is using for Shalimar Eau de Parfum and Shalimar Ode à la Vanille. Harrods even had an online feature showing Jagger, looking a bit uncomfortable at a desk, ‘sketching’ her designs. Harrods listed the iconic perfume as “Shalimar by Jade Jagger”!
Guerlain house perfumer Thierry Wasser developed the new, vanilla-enriched Shalimar Ode à la Vanille; it includes fragrance notes of lemon, bergamot, rose, jasmine, iris, incense, opoponax, tonka bean and two types of “infused” vanilla: Madagascar vanilla and Mayotte vanilla. Shalimar Ode à la Vanille starts off with a wonderful leather-tinged bergamot-lemon note. Quickly, Shalimar Ode à la Vanille begins to smell “creamy” — like a chilled vanilla-citrus custard. The florals, especially the rose and jasmine, are discernible in mid-development but really become apparent in Ode à la Vanille’s extreme dry-down. As Shalimar Ode à la Vanille segues from middle to base notes it becomes amber-y-floral — first, with dark vanilla, opoponax, a hint of frankincense, some tonka bean and leather-musk notes, then with a vanillic flower accord. (There’s also a transitory indolic note that stays close to skin.) Shalimar Ode à la Vanille smells natural and delicious…
5 Perfumes: to Smell Now
With age and experience comes the temptation of despairing prophecy. The landscape of perfumery is so ephemeral that is hard for even the most optimistic fragrance follower to not sometimes feel like Cassandra, plagued by futile visions of flaming, fallen monuments of smell. In truth, the internet has made possible the niche scent industry and new marvels are being created every month. Meanwhile, auction and fragrance decanting sites have ensured that, unlike the Library at Alexandria or the Buddhas of Bamiyan, the lost are not necessarily gone forever. There has never been a better or easier time to be a perfume lover. But the abundance and range of fragrances available to us, as well as the wealth of online information about those fragrances, has created an age of anxiety. What should we smell now, we wonder, before it’s gone?
For at least the past year, I have been campaigning for the best perfume boutique in my area to start stocking the Heeley fragrances. When the owners thought the samples I brought to the store last autumn were merely nice, I warned them: Heeleys are sneaky…
Guerlain Arsene Lupin ~ new fragrances
Guerlain has launched two new fragrances for men, Arsène Lupin Dandy and Arsène Lupin Voyou, inspired by the fictional “gentleman thief” Arsène Lupin, from the series of books by Maurice Leblanc. Lupin is sometimes called the French Sherlock Holmes…
What a lady must never do
Model Fernanda Tavares for Guerlain Shalimar. I think this was shot in 2001. The title comes from an article in the New York Times about the print ads for Shalimar shot by Annie Leibowitz that same year (see image below the jump, possibly NSFW): columnist Mary Tannen notes that…