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…
Racism storm
French perfume-maker Jean-Paul Guerlain faces prosecution by anti-racist groups after telling a television interviewer that he “worked like a n*****” to produce one of his most successful scents.
— From Guerlain heir in racism storm at RFI. You can also read more at CNN. As it happens, I am on the road today so will be slow to answer comments; since this news is likely to upset many people, I do most kindly ask that everyone keep the conversation civil.
Update: for the most part people have remained civil, but the conversation is getting a little frayed around the edges and lots of varying viewpoints have already been expressed, so I'm closing the comments.
Jean-Paul Guerlain & Thierry Wasser at The Perfume Diaries, Harrods
About the author: Nina is our guest shopper for London. If you missed her review of the Perfume Diaries exhibit, you can find it here. She took all of the images for this article.
The Perfume Diaries season at Harrods is not just about the exhibition. Throughout September, there are a number of evening events featuring some of the people and processes involved in the production of perfume.
For me, the most exciting of these was ‘The House of Guerlain’ on 9 September, with Jean-Paul Guerlain himself, and current in-house parfumeur, Thierry Wasser. I went along with my friend and neighbour Stephanie, fizzing with excitement.
All of the events are first-come-first-seated, apart from this one, which was a very hard gig to get into. On the night, the exhibition area was packed, with guests being checked off carefully on a list and absolutely no interlopers allowed to gatecrash…
Guerlain Samsara ~ perfume review
According to Michael Edwards in Perfume Legends, Guerlain Samsara was the result both of love and a calculated business decision.1 First the part about love. In 1985, Jean-Paul Guerlain made a perfume for an Englishwoman he wanted to seduce. She said she liked sandalwood and jasmine, so he designed for her a fragrance loaded with both notes. She wore it faithfully and told him people would cross the street to ask what her perfume was. (I guess when the chief perfumer for Guerlain supplies you with free, custom perfume, you wear enough to be smelled across a couple of lanes of traffic.)
Now the business angle. About the same time Jean-Paul was pitching woo to his English girlfriend, the house of Guerlain was rethinking its business strategy. For a century the company had created fragrances it thought were pretty, and marketing played a backseat role. By the mid-1980s, perfume wasn’t just a luxury item created by a handful of perfume houses anymore. The tidal wave of entities selling perfume that now includes car manufacturers, jewelers, country music stars, and even fast food restaurants was just cresting the horizon. Guerlain realized it had better draw up a new business model.
Big, exotic perfumes were popular. Yves Saint Laurent Opium raced to the top of the charts in 1977, and Chanel Coco followed in 1984…
Guerlain Chamade ~ fragrance review
To me, Guerlain Chamade Eau de Toilette is spring in a bottle. Spraying it is like encountering a bank of daffodils on a grey day and realizing birds are chirping and winter is on its last legs. Spraying Chamade you can practically see a bouquet of purple hyacinths, stems and all, materialize, complete with a hummingbird whirring in for breakfast. While snow pummeled the East Coast, it has been unseasonably balmy here, and crocuses splatter across lawns. It’s Chamade season.
Jean-Paul Guerlain created Chamade. It launched in 1969, and in The Book of Perfumes, John Oakes writes that Guerlain spent seven years and made more than 1,300 trial versions before he perfected it.1 Guerlain’s website calls Chamade an “oriental fruity floral” and mentions cassis buds, hyacinth, and Guerlinade as its notes. Jan Moran‘s Fabulous Fragrances lists Chamade’s top notes as greens, galbanum, bergamot, hyacinth, and aldehydes; its heart as rose, jasmine, lilac, and clove; and its base as vanilla, amber, benzoin, sandalwood, and vetiver.2
If you’ve read anything about Chamade, you probably know that a chamade is the name of a pattern of drumbeat the French troops used back in the day to communicate retreat…