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| Les Parisiennes - a collection of re-editions of some of Guerlain's finest moments, packaged up in their famous 'Bee' bottles |
In one of his Master Classes, the
great French cellist Paul Tortelier was attempting to convince his students
that J. S. Bach’s 5th unaccompanied cello sonata symbolised the Creation of
Man. With awesome emphasis, he drew his bow across the strings and proclaimed:
“First, the Prophet! YOU MUST NOT! Then comes the thunder! (BOOM) Then, the
lightning (CRASH), then the darkness...” Eyes blazing, eyebrows raised, he
lowered his voice and continued: “Slowly, hesitantly, emerging from the sea...”
Overcome, he stopped and leaned
forward, nostrils flaring: “The sea! It is the sea!” He breathed rapturously.
“I can smell the salt!”
Turning again to the class, he
demanded: “Can you not smell the salt?”
Totally mesmerised, his class sat,
turned to stone. It did not seem that any one of them could smell the salt,
even though one of them was also French, but he was extremely nervous
and Tortelier was not only French, he was seen to be French.
Only a Frenchman could smell salt in a
cello sonata. This is why the French dominate the perfume world.
Only France could have produced Paul
Tortelier, and only a Frenchman could have named a perfume: Voila! Pourquoi J’amais Rosine!
Naturally, it was a Guerlain.
The Perfumes
Jicky – 1889
Lavender/Vanilla
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| The one that started it all: Jicky |
1889 was the year of the Great
Universal Exhibition in Paris and the completion of the Eiffel Tower.
It was the year that Paul Gauguin
painted his “Yellow Christ” and Henri de Toulouse de Lautrec painted “Au Bal de
la Galette”; - it was also the year that the tormented Vincent van Gogh gave up
the struggle and took his own life.
It was one year before the massacre of
the Sioux tribe at Wounded Knee, and the year that Jean Cocteau was born.
Whether by intent or coincidence, from early manhood until the day he died,
Cocteau always wore Jicky.
With this scent, a pet-name for
Jacques, Aime Guerlain created what was to prove the most beloved of all the
Guerlain fragrances. Not perhaps the most famous, maybe not even the most
stylish, but certainly the most fond.
Après L’Ondée - 1906
Heliotrope
Guerlain’s sublime evocation of a
rain-drenched summer garden came into being in the year which saw the deaths of
both Ibsen and Cézanne.
It was the year of the San Francisco
earthquake, and the year after earthquakes of another kind; when Einstein
published his Theory of Relativity, and Freud his Theory of Sexuality.
Utrillo painted Paris seen from the
Place Saint-Pierre, and Roualt painted the “Girl with a Mirror”. Meanwhile,
Edvard Munch designed costumes for a production of Ibsen’s “Ghosts”, and
Galsworthy published the first instalment of “The Forsyte Saga”.
In America, the Barrymores ruled the
stage, Isadora Duncan had begun her dance, and if George M. Cohan was under the
impression he would own Broadway forever, someone by the name of Florenz
Ziegfeld was rehearsing his first Follies.
Après
L’Ondée is not a
scent for simpletons of either sex: deceptively innocent, extraordinarily
subtle [and powdery], it will creep up behind you and bind you in silken threads
so tight that you won’t even be able to open your mouth to cry help.
Vague Souvenir – 1912
Composition unknown
Surely one of the most evocative,
tantalising names ever to grace a label, Vague Souvenir. What? One wonders. A
memory? Of whom? Of where? Of what?
Was it just a momentary recollection,
never fully recalled? A sad romance? A memory of childhood? Lost innocence?
One has this image: a self-assured
woman, comfortably situated, well-dressed, elegant, serene. A delightful home, a
charming husband and family. A busy and fulfilling social life. No worries, no
fears, but perhaps regrets? Possibly...
Suddenly, into this total security and
serenity something strikes a chord in her memory. Doors, long closed in her
conscious mind, open briefly then close again. But for one fleeting moment,
something she had forgotten, or tried to forget, has touched her again. Perhaps
a man. More than probably.
Successful in his chosen field,
respected by his colleagues, enjoying and enjoyed by a wide circle of friends,
charming wife, delightful children, lovely home... stops off at the tobacconist
on his way to the office, and a wisp of something in the air transports him in
one split second to another time, another place, and to someone in particular
who once meant so much...
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage we did not take
To the door we never opened
Into the rose garden...
Perhaps those unbearably touching
lines from Eliot are the key to Vague
Souvenir, surely the saddest, most bittersweet name ever given to a
perfume.
L’Heure Bleu – 1912
Cloves/Carnation/Woody Violet
1912 saw the Balkan Wars and the death
of Strindberg. Picasso and Braque were presenting their first paper collages,
Chagall painted “The Cattle Dealer”, Schönberg presented “Pierrot Lunaire”, and
Anatole France was writing “Les Dieux ont Soif”.
The rage of Paris was “Le Grand
Meaulnes”, the first and last book by a young man named Alain Fournier,
destined to be killed in the Great War looming ahead.
With a certain synchronicity, Guerlain
produced L’Heure Bleue which is to
perfume what “Le Grand Meaulnes” is to literature: haunting, elusive,
mysterious and eternal: the one destined to produce the other. Like many great
men with nothing to prove and a nose for the divine, L’Heure Bleue was reputed to be favoured by Sir Laurence Olivier,
whilst his wife, the equally divine Vivien Leigh, stayed true to Caron’s Bellodgia. A truly fragrant if doomed
couple surely.
The most luxurious ocean liner ever
built, the “unsinkable” Titanic, sank on her maiden voyage to New York with
almost total loss of life, symbolising a way of life soon to disappear forever,
with the world trembling on the brink of the most terrible war thus far
experienced.
[The following musing on
the Titanic was found on a separate sheet under the heading “L’Heure Bleue”]
On the floor of the
ocean, the ballrooms are silent, the weeds wave, and the fishes swim between
the marble pillars in green twilight, startling their own reflections in the
mirrors.
In the restaurants, the
damask tablecloths have fallen into lace, the crystal clouded, the porcelain
dimmed. The ice-buckets have grown barnacles, and on the floor, the unopened
champagne rolls gently, chilled and maturing beyond all expectation.
On the sun decks, pages
of “Le Grand Meaulnes” dissolve with parasols under rugs, and on the dressing
tables, bottles of L’Heure Bleue
crust into still-life with the tarnished silver-backed hair brushes and
hand-mirrors.
Mitsoukou – 1919
Chypre
1919 saw the end of the War to end all
Wars and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Hope once again triumphed
over experience and set up the League of Nations. August Renoir survived the
war, only to die at the end of it.
Dada groups formed in Cologne and
Berlin, and the Bauhaus was founded in Weimar.
Meanwhile, Serge Diaghilev and his
Ballet Russes staged “La Boutique Fantasque, Man Ray produced “Jazz”, Erik
Satie produced “Socrates”, and Picasso designed the costumes for [productions
of] “Le Tricorne” and “Pulcinella”.
Amadeo Modigliani’s daughter was born
to a father with less than a year to live, her mother would wait only slightly
longer before throwing herself of a Paris roof.
In America, the 18th Amendment to the
Constitution was ratified, and Prohibition (of the sale of alcohol) became
reality, bringing with it the birth of the bootlegger and the Speakeasy, and
ensuring the future fortunes of Al Capone and his crew, whilst in India, a
former attorney, Mohandas K. Gandhi, was preparing to launch his programme of
Civil Disobedience against the British Raj.
1919 also saw the creation of two of
the most outstanding and enduring perfumes in the history of perfumery: Mitsouko by the master, Jacques
Guerlain, and Tabac Blond by Ernest
Daltroff for Caron – but more of that in another chapter.
Diaghilev, who had originally favoured
another Guerlain scent, L’Heure Bleu,
immediate switched his allegiance to Mitsouko,
which has been identified with him ever since. Defying analysis, you can sniff
and search as much as you like, you will never pinpoint its elusive soul.
Redolent, as so many perfumes of that time, of the Ballet Russes. Once, when
wearing it, a taxi-driver refused my fare. “Not after how you’ve made my cab
smell, love!” He said.
“Ah,” sighed my Parisien friend,
Madeleine; “he was a poet...”
Shalimar – 1925
Oriental
Sally
Blake
The famous bottle with its Ceylon
sapphire coloured glass stopper was designed by Raymond Guerlain in the same
year that the Cloche hat came into fashion, Ravel wrote “L’Enfant et les
Sortilèges”, Mondrian presented “The New Forms” and Thomas Mann published “The
Magic Mountain”.
Emma
Blake
In the popular HBO television series,
“The Sopranos”, Shalimar is “Uncle
Junior” Corrado Soprano’s weapon of choice when launching any assault on any
new lady. She will be sent a bottle of the stuff, usually with an invitation to
Atlantic City. The invitation may not always be accepted, but none of his
“goomaras” has ever sent the bottle back. Such is the enduring power of this
scent.
Habanita – 1921 (Molinard)
Oriental
No, I know it’s not a Guerlain, it was
in fact created by Molinard, but if Shalimar
is the scent of the lady, then we are supposed to assume that Habanita is the scent of the “Cocotte”,
and it not only deserves special mention, but an Access All Areas pass into the Guerlain chapter...
Habanita is simply one of the most
loved fragrances of all time. If, to smell like a high-class
chocolatier-cum-patisserie, warm, cuddly, and as appetizing as vanilla, is to
smell like a “cocotte”, then can this really be so bad? Patchouli features, as
it does in any good “cocotte’s” perfume, along with something like the smell of
burning joss-sticks (of the best and most expensive kind of course).
There seems to be a little conflicting wisdom as to the true year of
Habanita’s launch. My mother originally claimed 1934, yet The Perfume Handbook
asserts 1924.
Neither, it was in fact 1921. The confusion arises from the fact it
has been presented in several different flacons, the most famous being ‘Beauty’
by René Lalique et Cie, a black crystal bottle with a sculptured frieze of
caryatids, but aso in a flacon named ‘Diamond’ made by Cristalleries de
Baccarat in 1934
Liu – 1933
Powdery Jasmine
Named after the tragic character of
the Chinese slave girl who sacrifices herself for love in Puccini’s opera
“Turandot”, Guerlain produced Liu in
a Baccarat flacon of deepest amethyst crystal in an “Odéon” box of black and
gold.
Appropriately enough, the same year
saw the Long March in China, Lorca wrote “Blood Wedding” (Bodas de Sangre), Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented The New Deal
to his fellow Americans, and Prohibition ended.
Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler came to power
in Germany, and his Nazi Party immediately put an end to the “decadent”
activities of the Bauhaus.
General notes found in a folder:
An extremely penetrating, sweet and
troubling perfume, very taking, very tempting, but not perhaps of the utterly
disoignified good tast which is the final word of a great perfume. Coty’s Antique Amber and Idylle approach nearer Jacqueminot
Rose was also a great sale.
“American women visit the
establishment on the Faubourg S. Honoré just below the British Embassy for the
historic associations. In front of the old.....
...........Hopper who, he says, earned him $80,000 last year.”
“Zina was chatting with the Master
about ‘chemical odours’. The Perfume Princess knows perfectly that there is
practically no ‘natural’ violet and that the most delicious product requires a
mixture of aniline (coal tar) violet, and the violet drawn from what she said
was Iris.
“Violet, the old true violet,” said
the ‘Older’ Guerlain, “costs $2,600 a kilo...”
It was possible for him to be deceived
by the raw material merchants.
“We buy flower essences from Grasse
and Bulgaria.” Said Jacques.
“Undoubtedly there is some little...
manipulation, I am convinced that no Bulgarian has ever brought to Paris the
tiniest phial of perfect pure rose essense, but there is a limit to their
little tricks.”
He mentioned various tests by which
the perfumers protect themselves; polarisation of light, the evaporation test,
and above all, the trained ‘Nose’.
A pure and simple coal tar perfume
could not be foisted on a first class perfumer as a real flower essence. I know
the Guerlain sons, Jacques and Pierre, spend whole afternoons personally taking
the musk from the pouches, handling the rose ambergris, inspecting strips of
Spanish leather, and arrivals of exotic woods. The Guerlain’s Sillage, a refined and lasting man’s
perfume of the $3 series, has a basis of oriental odorous wood, growing in a
certain limited district, discovered by their grandfather. Its importation is a
secret. M. Guerlain Pére has frequently been heard to say that when the wood of
that little district is used up, there will be no more Sillage.
“Mere names of perfumes give you no
idea - You must smell them.”
For example, as many manufacturers, so
there are as many different Chypres. Indeed, there is ideally no such perfume,
Walter Scott mentions it, and in Houbigant’s Quintessences of 1775 – there is a Cipris. Guerlain has a Cyprisine.
“Chypre” was a very successful mixture of Atkinson’s many years ago, and as he
did not protect the name in France, all the perfumers took it, each making his
own according to fancy. The Guerlain Chypre
de Paris – I heard this in conversation from one of the sons (Guerlain),
and not at all for publication – is a sum total of perfume value, distinction,
strength, lasting qualities, which it would be practical......
.... customer. This invention of
‘personal’ odours is an expensive summit of the perfume craze. I shall not
touch it because the true perfume amateur, as the Princess says, ‘is not
content with one odour, five or ten’. She may have favourites, but is always
seeing something new’. The ‘personal’ perfume is merely the mark of the vain
woman, many attempt it, cheaply, by mixing. They make messes.
We stood in the famous shop on the Rue
de la Paix. It also if of historic interest, by reason of the distinguished
personages who have been among the clients of the firm. King Edward VII when
Prince of Wales, was a regular customer. On the firm’s books appear the names
of Queen Alexandra, the Queen of the Belgians, Czar Ferdinand of Bulgaria, and
all the Grand Dukes. The Guerlains moved in about the year 1840 from a shop in
the Hôtel Meurice, which had opened in 1828. Shortly, they will remove to the
Avenue des Champs Elysees, while Côty opens his first retail shop in the Rue de
la Paix.
They were talking about names.
“One must know what one wants.” Said
the Perfume Princess. “Do you like a musked perfume? None of the great houses
have been able to make a refined modern essence based on musk, but they are
musked. If you do not like it, you might regret to tumble on Ai-Loë or Bon Vieux Temps, both strongly musked.”
“I like all perfumes,” continued fair
Zina, “but if I had to make a choice, I’d take Kadine, and Rue De La Paix,
and perhaps Purple Lilac”
Kadine is an Iris, but so fragrant and
lasting, so arranged and dressed up, that it seems a Queen of Odours.
Rue
de la Paix is softly
sweet, restful, nothing pungent, but haunting and even makes a crave. Both cost
$5 the smallest bottle, of scarcely 70 grammes liquid...
NOTES:
Zina
would appear to have been Mlle Zinda Brozia, the so-called Perfume Princess of
Paris, and the quotes attributed to her to have come from an article in the The
Times Democrat of New Orleans, Sunday, March 9, 1913.
Exposition International des Arts
Decoratifs - 1925
The International Exhibition of Modern
Decorative Arts was originally planned for 1915, so, having been designed some
10 years earlier, none of the pavilions were exactly ‘le dernier cri’.
Britain’s contribution was miniscule;
America and Germany - home of the vastly influential and far-reaching Bauhaus –
not represented at all.
The Eiffel Tower dominated the whole
with a neon-lit advertisement for Citroën blazing down one side.
The main attraction was Cocteau’s
barge, an extension of his nightclub: “Le Boeuf sur le Toit” moored on the
quayside.
In a desperate and doomed attempt to turn
public taste away from Chanel’s stark modernity back to the more comfortable
realms of OTT, Paul Poiret had no fewer than three barges designed by Dufy;
“Amour” – a nightclub and restaurant, “Delices” – a theatre, and “Orgue” for
objets d’art.
One gets the definite impression that
time has lent gloss to what seems to have been a distinctly tacky affair; not
unlike the ridiculous Festival of Britain in 1951, and like all such events,
far better to imagine than to have experienced.
Still, Raymond Guerlain did use
it as an excuse to design the most famous scent bottle in the world for their
superb Shalimar, so it can’t all have
been bad.
Sally Blake
Date
unknown
