Guerlain has launched Les Secrets de Sophie, a new perfume by Jean-Paul Guerlain presented in three limited edition bottles by French jewelry designer Sophie Levy. Les Secrets Noirs de Sophie (shown above) has accents in black, Les Secrets Poudres de Sophie in pink, and Les Secrets Nacres de Sophie, in white…
My father owned a bottle of Guerlain’s Habit Rouge Eau de Cologne when I was in the fifth grade. I’d sometimes put on a drop or two of the fragrance, but I was mortified if someone noticed my scent. (I did not like attention directed at my person — especially anything to do with grooming — when I was a pre-teen; the words:“Somebody smells good!” and the accompanying sniffing sounds made me cringe, and fear I was about to be sullied by a pair of unclean nostrils aimed at my perfumed skin.) I outgrew my skittishness around the time I left home for New York City and college life; I often doused myself with Habit Rouge Eau de Cologne (a going-away gift) and welcomed every bit of attention that came my way. Ten years later, older, wiser and less concerned with my effect on others, I bought Habit Rouge Eau de Toilette for the first time (the original Eau de Cologne formulation had been phased out). Three years ago at the Venice airport, on my way home from vacation in Naples, Italy, I couldn’t resist a bottle of Habit Rouge Eau de Toilette Légère1 — a “lighter,” limited edition of Habit Rouge, now discontinued. This past winter, a friend gave me a bottle of “classic” Habit Rouge Eau de Toilette for my birthday. Habit Rouge and I — we go way back.
Habit Rouge was created by Jean-Paul Guerlain and released in 1965; the original, rather baroque, list of ingredients (lemon, bergamot, basil, pimento, cinnamon, carnation, rose, rosewood, sandalwood, patchouli, cedar, amber, vanilla, moss, leather, benzoin, labdanum, olibanum) bears little relation to the Habit Rouge you’ll smell today…
Imagine that you're standing at the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. Behind you is an acre planted thickly with pink roses. It's the end of an August day, and the sun is setting in tones of apricot fading to purple as it bleeds into the sky. Now add a full orchestra and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing The Beatles' “All You Need is Love”. What you get is grand, passionate, lush, and faintly cartoonish. In other words, you get Guerlain Nahéma.
Jean-Paul Guerlain created Nahéma in 1979. The Guerlain website gives it a top note of hyacinth; a heart of ylang ylang, rose, and peach; and a base of vanilla, tonka bean, and wood. Osmoz builds on this description and gives Nahéma top notes of bergamot, mandarin, and rose; a heart of rose, peach, cyclamen, and lily; and a base of vanilla, sandalwood, vetiver, and benzoin. The simplest description of Nahéma would be rose…
Famed French perfumer Jean-Paul Guerlain once said, "To imagine a scent is to imagine the woman who wears it." He probably didn't mean it quite as literally as today's perfumers are taking it. With the top end of the fragrance market booming, it's no surprise that luxury brands—titans like Guerlain, Cartier and Jean Patou, as well as smaller specialized houses—are investing in the rapid-growth niche sector of bespoke perfumery.
— From Bottling Your Own Personal Smell: Luxury perfumers create singular scents—for a price at Newsweek magazine.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Aqua Allegoria range from Guerlain, they might be seen as “entry level” Guerlains; they are supposed to “showcase nature”, and they tend to be lighter, younger and simpler in composition than the perfumes in the regular line. For the past few years they've been introducing two new Aqua Allegoria scents a year, and discontinuing those that don't do well. There are a few I really like (Herba Fresca, Anisia Bella, Mandarine Basilic), and despite the fact that some years they're just duds, I always look forward to trying the new editions. The 2008 entries: Figue Iris and Laurier Réglisse.
Aqua Allegoria Figue Iris is attributed to perfumer Jean-Paul Guerlain. I'll start right off with a disclaimer: I love fig and I love iris, but the combination doesn't entirely appeal to me, and I've yet to meet a powdery fig I could love…