Luxury Past & Present

[callmemadam]

the iconic fragrance which Thierry Wasser wants to turn pink

Did anyone else watch the BBC 4 programme Perfume yesterday evening? It showed Guerlain and Estée Lauder trying to appeal to new, younger perfume buyers. For my taste, the programme was too much about marketing and not enough about the alchemy of creating a successful perfume but it was still interesting. Viewers were left wondering what the ‘racist remark’ was which Jean-Paul Guerlain made on live TV but it’s easily Googled. As a result, the last Guerlain to run the company was deposed before his time to be replaced by his scheduled heir, Thierry Wasser. I was intrigued by Wasser’s comment that the production of Guerlain perfumes was artisanale compared with its competitors and would have to change. He’s looking for globalization just at the time when ‘artisanal’ is the buzzword when applied to other products.

Perfume was followed by The Luxe Experience, with lots of wonderful photographs of art deco buildings and Paul Attenbury waxing eloquent about his favourite era. Unfortunately I fell asleep before the end so will have to catch it on the iPlayer.

[Poll #1757051]

Comments

[land-girl.livejournal.com]

Shalimar is my mother's favourite; we had the devil's own job trying to find her some when she was first in hospital, and we were advised that it might help to bring her out of a coma!

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Goodness, just like eating a madeleine!

[aellia.livejournal.com]

My first job was in Boots where the supervisor wore Shalimar.
I wished that I'd watched both of those programmes. I must look what's on and remember!
x

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

The supervisor must have been well paid! Most people wore something cheaper, like Blue Grass or Coty L'Aimant.

[aellia.livejournal.com]

I think she sprayed the demonstration bottle each day :-)

[joyeuce]

Actually my favourite favourite perfume is some I had for my wedding; I saw a site advertised in one of the wedding magazines where you filled in a questionnaire and they sent you personalised perfume. Unfortunately I can't remember the website, and if I could I doubt I would give the same answers, so it really is unique!

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Wonderful idea!

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

You're going native :-)

Almost the first shot in the film showed a very elegant Parisienne wanting perfume for 'this young lady', presumably her daughter. After much experimenting they picked 'her very first perfume' (she looked about twelve) and so hoped to make her a Guerlain customer for life.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Babies?! I don't even like the idea of little girls wearing scent.

[gwendraith.livejournal.com]

I missed it but might be able to catch up on iplayer. The two perfumes I mentioned in the poll are my 'posh' stuff. For every day I like Hugo Boss Orange or Ghost. I have a smashing book which lists most perfumes. The descriptions are often amusing :)

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Descriptions: like wine?

[gwendraith.livejournal.com]

Descriptions like...

Fool or Love (Ego Facto). All the mad luxury of five Yardley soaps all at once.

Miss Dior (Doir). The present Miss Dior is a dry pinched, aldehydic chypre, ageless in a prematurely wrinkled way, and makes me think of pursed, painted lips hissing disparaging bons mots.

To a more acceptable...

Shalimar (Guerlain). (Cut at the start as it's a large comment). Shalimar reminds me of those weird, garish paint schemes, all bold strokes and vivid colours, used on WW1 battleships to make them invisible from a distance. Up close it is intensely woody-smoky with huge animalic notes, a sort of Jicky wound up like a seven-day clock. From afar it is vanillic amber with merely exceptional reach. (Much more in the description). It gets five stars :)

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Golly!

[gwendraith.livejournal.com]

It really is an amusing read :)

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

Is that the Turin/Sanchez book? I really don't agree with some of their assessments (and in some cases they seemed to have a particular gripe against individual perfumers, I felt really sorry for Mona di Orio).

[gwendraith.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is the Turin/Sanchez book. It's just their opinion. I found it very amusing and I still buy the perfumes I like whatever they thought :)

[oddny.livejournal.com]

Ghost

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

That's two of you and I don't even know it.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Sounds exotic!

[lethe1]

Shalimar is far too heavy for my nose and skin!

I've always had trouble finding a good scent for my skin. Then once I was given a tester of Madame Rochas. I'd never have picked it myself, because I didn't like the name or the look (very traditional), but it turned out to be perfect for me. Nowadays I can't find the eau de parfum anywhere, not even in tax-free shops, and the eau de toilette isn't as good, it smells much more synthetic.

After that I've had Pear Cassis by Fresh for a while. That was a lovely, cheering scent, even though it didn't last long on my skin, but it has been discontinued.

I haven't been able to find a good replacement yet, so at the moment I'm going without.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

I rarely wear any myself, although I like it. If someone near me is wearing a heavy perfume it makes me cough.

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

The thing they glossed over was that Guerlain is now owned by LVMH, the massive luxury comglomerate, and that most of the classics have been reformulated and their recent output has been... well, unsatifyingly mass-market. Guerlain is as much a big corporate cog now as any other mass-market perfumer. It's sad, really.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

That is sad, especially if they've changed the old formula for some perfumes.

Scent - Guerlain, etc.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, dear, I should've get started on this as scent is a passion of mine. Like the young girl in the Guerelain programme on TV, I had my first grown up scent when I was 12 - Miss Dior, which my mother bought for me on a trip to London (at the department store no longer there, Swan & Edgar.) Later both my mother and I fell for two scents: Guerlain's Mitsuko and Lanvin's Arpege. I still love these although Arpege doesn't smell quite as it good in the 1950s. But then, my nose is older, too!
Later I loved Madame Rochas, which my husband once bought for me as a present, and later still, I was given a bottle of Hermes' Caleche and that, of all the scents I loved, including Guerlain's L'heure Bleue and Chanel No 5 and Chanel 19, has to be my favourite. Sadly modern scents don't do it for me. I've recently bought two from L'Occitane, Verbena and Mimosa but they have no staying power whatsoever and modern versions of the lovely light Je Reviens and Blue Grass smell far to synthetic compared with how they smelt 50 years ago. As for Shalimar, I find it too heavy, as I do Samsara.
I believe the next programme in this short series about scent will be about making the actual products.
Margaret P

Re: Scent - Guerlain, etc.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

My, what a sophisticated twelve year old!
I'm looking forward to the next programme; in fact I'm enjoying the whole Luxury series very much.