Vere Novo

And now for something less obscure: Guerlain.

Vere Novo, the internets agree, was created by Jacques Guerlain in 1895. That's all I know and the rest is rants.

There is it, a two ounce 'apothecary' bottle, sitting on my table. The bottle was made by Pochet et du Courval until 1939, which is also the ante quem date for the content. I'm not that much of an expert to set a more exact date based on the label so I welcome any further clarification.



1895... back then, people used to put perfume on their gloves and handkerchiefs. There were only a few synthetic materials used in perfumery. Holy shit, this thing may have been made before my great-grandma was born!!! For some reason, I expected that Vere Novo would be something like Shalimar, just uglier. I'm not the biggest fan of Shalimar, it's somewhere between the I wouldn't mind it as a gift and Quite like it on my appreciation scale, which is probably why I have two bottles of it but that would be another story. Maybe later, and after all, everybody knows Shalimar. Back to the ancient Vere Novo, which is not similar to Shalimar.

It took me quite a time to get a grasp of this fragrance. It happens rather often with vintages, some are so well blended and matured that it is pretty hard to discern the perfume accords or ingredients. The same is happening again and again with Vere Novo: whatever was it made of, now it is a perfect unity. I dabbed it generously on my forearm and it surprised me again. Three words: galbanum, leather, vanilla. I'm sure there's more to that (I suspect some cade and vetiver at least, and anything that suppresses the annoying sweet facet of ethylvanilin) but there's a green blast of the top notes, which may rather be some aged citruses than actual galbanum, or citruses and galbanum. The first half an hour, there's even a teeny tiny touch of sillage, from two steps away, it may be supposed that I could be wearing a perfume. A bit later, when I moved my arm around, I'd stop and wonder how come I smell so nicely and now, in the afternoon, there's a spot that smells vaguely of vanilla. Or rather vanilla leather, don't you dare to think about in-your-face vanilla of a drugstore body lotion. If I understand what a skin scent is, then this is the skin scent.

I like quite an amount of fragrances and I don't have a strict preference, even if I rather dwell in the smoky resiny territory most of the time. The occasions when I get really enchanted are few and far between but this is one of them.

Mourn for this fragrance because it was discontinued a hundred years ago or around. However, in spirit, it is close to Vol de Nuit and less so in Shalimar (which is too sweet but there is something in common). Or believe in a stroke of luck.

A special message for the Guerlain headquarters: should you kindly revive this one, too, and preferably in an affordable presentation? With a nice skin product, preferably perfumed oil. Thank you very much.

My badly guessed notes for Guerlain's Vere Novo: lime, galbanum, leather, vanilla, touch of vetiver.

Philtre d'Amour

Philtre d'Amour was launched in 1999, now it's discontinued and sometimes you can come across it in the internetz. Which is how I got it. Just... I don't know why, I have rather a complicated relationship to Guerlain.

For the purposes of accuracy, I checked a dictionary and discovered that Philtre d'Amour means love potion. And vomited in my mouth a little. I know, I know, it's just me who detests these innuendo-implying names of things. I'll rather stick to thinking that philtre means filter (yay for dog French) and put it to the vicinity of Calandre, which works much better for me. Now excuse me, I need to ponder about it for a while and to check that I actually like the fragrance.
Damn.

Alright, for my purposes, I've renamed it Verdante Effluve. Because it's quite a bit green. Very sharply and intensively green. I needed to wait until spring to find out, for some reason, in winter, I found it intolerable and after four or so hours when the sharp verbena and citrus faded, something like Metallica came to the surface... and I'm telling you, Metallica with lemon zest is evil.
But, then spring happened to begin and the fragrance worked much better. It is green and pungent, with a patchouli base (modern chypre, they call it. Well, no oakmoss, cistus and bergamot, no chypre for me) that makes it somehow more stable than just another cologne. There's also some myrrh which blends so well into verbena and citruses that it's imperceptible on its own, just adding another tangy facet.


I can't think of any similar fragrance, which means that there are many of them out there and I, as a citrus non-liker, keep missing them.

Verdante Effluve (1) Philtre d'Amour (ptooooi!) was launched in 1999 as eau de parfum in the pictured 30ml bottle. Now it is available from Maison Guerlain in the 125ml bee bottle for 180 euros.


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(1) I'm keeping this name in stock for my purposes. Just saying.

Quand vient la pluie

Yeah, this one. Almost half a litre of extrait.

The picture won't get any better, the bottle got split and decants are already mailed in all the directions. On Sunday, I and Domenica, who sort of organized it (although some of the gals started arguing that they got the idea first, that they mentioned it first etc.) met, decanted, got ready for mailing and then had a bottle of wonderful Cabernet Sauvignon from Moldova.
The Guerlain people could rething the big bottle, though. It's that sort that calls for relabelling it 'cherry brandy' and filling it with anti-freeze (1). And, I don't have a clue how is one supposed to pour it from the bottle to the tiny lovely flacon because the big bottle is full nearly to the brim and in order not to spill the contents, one needs to pour it rather vigorously. My table will smell of chocolate violets for quite a time, I guess.
I have a cold so I can only provide a cursory impression: Quand vient la pluie has nothing to do with rain, it's violets and bitter chocolate and I could imagine it as excellent bonbons. And, it blends perfectly well with Dzongkha which I happened to wear yesterday in the chocolate violets impregnated room.

I'm a magpie and I like all things shiny, which is no news to anyone who knows me at least a little bit. So... Quand vient la pluie comes with a round spray bottle and a bottle holder in the shape of a brick with leaf imprinted. Big one for extrait, with a bejewelled bottle, while eau de parfum gets a smaller brick of glass and plain bottle. Domenica owns the edp and brought it for comparison.

I got hold of the glass brick (2), now it sits on my table and it's being pretty. I think I could tie a piece of string through the flacon-holding hole and use it as an assault weapon, should it be needed. And yeah, I have a red table. It was on sale in Ikea... sometimes money wins over taste.

Quand vient la pluie was a limited release in 2007 and it may still be available at Maison Guerlain. Or not anymore.


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(1) It's an old joke: Darling, where is the vinegar? Oh, you old fool, between the cleaning stuff, in a wine bottle labelled Developer.
And, my jams are in yoghurt or mayonnaise jars, we're a recycling household. In other words, unless you're absolutely sure, it's recommended to at least sniff every container or you find yourself being suffocated by truffle oil in the pharmacy bottle that says it holds some skin ointment, knowing that I use used pharmacy bottles for perfumes... or drinking the infamous thermonuclear calvados brandy and wondering why the Martini is so strong. And I'm not mentioning turpentine.
(2) because it's shiny

Mahora

Launched in 2000, discontinued in 2006, reformulated and sold in Les Parisiennes collections as Mayotte.

I would gladly say that Mahora is unremarkable but it wouldn't be true. It is indeed very remarkable. Like being hit with a tuberose scented brick and choked by roses and then drowned in coconut suntan lotion. It's overwhelming in the worst sense of the word. I had a sample of the eau de toilette concentration and it was all coconut - it's not listed in the fragrance notes but I do smell it there.
Now, I got rid of whatever of Mahora I had (I must say that I'm not sure at this point because a part of my collection sort of oscillates between me and my friend O. so that Mahora might have been hers or there were more specimens) and then I saw the extrait.

The 'normal' eau de parfum bottle, as seen on the advert featuring Elsa Benitez and Ayers Rock is a weird art deco-ish mess of shapes which was designed by Robert Granaï and, well I think it was a mistake.
I suspect that the extrait flacon was a way how Monsieur Granaï regained his reputation. The heavy golden pebble with a glass window that shows the golden liquid is utterly cool.

From the concave side, it looks like a model of some small universe, with a sun and a purple satellite.

Still, the fragrance didn't get any better in the extrait concentration. It is more rosey, sweet and sickening, and dries down to overwhelming coconut soap. I can barely bring myself to smell it from the blotter in fear that I may die of too much sweetness.

I bought it because of the flacon. I admit it. Apparently I'm not the only one who detests Mahora because nobody wants the decanted content so that I could use this lovely pebble bottle for something that actually smells nice.


Perfume notes for Mahora by Guerlain:
top notes: orange, aldehydes, almond blossom
middle notes: tuberose, jasmine, neroli, ylang-ylang, frangipani
base notes: sandalwood, vanilla, vetiver

Mahora is discontinued and it was a good riddance. Widely available in the internetz, just look around. Or I can send you that extrait in a neat roll-on bottle.

Guerlinade

I won't write about things already written.

I heard that it's rather a strong lilac scent. It's November and if you killed me, I'm not able to recall the smell of lilac, I suspect that there are not that many in Italy where I spent the spring. There are two lilac bushes just under the window of my flat but they totally are not in bloom.
I suspect that I should wait until May but I don't want to. Guerlinade is a thing of pure beauty although I have problems defining why. A sign that there's something interesting going on. It reminds me of rosin, the stuff used for making the pointe shoes less slippery; there was a box of the brittle clumps in the corner of the room... damn, it seems such a long time since I was in the classes.
There is something delicately resiny in Guerlinade and the close vicinity to floral notes and something powdery beneath makes it a gem. Indeed, it is multi-faceted, at one point being resiny and then floral, heavy yet subtle at a same time, and again it changes into powdery. I adore the general lack of sweetness and the staying power and...

Eh, well, I have two bottles. That says it all.

Guerlinade was a limited edition launched in 1998 and then in 2005 for the opening of the Guerlain flagship store in Paris. I'm not absolutely sure whether it is still available from the Guerlain boutique but I think not - then the only possibility how to get it would be a collector selling one off. Alas.

Some sort of love story

Long time ago, when I was young and stupid and read fashion mags almost religiously (along with my mother's nagging, I guess it added to my anorexia and borderline fashion-victimness) and I came across an article on perfumes. Djedi was described as 'the strangest and dryest perfume of all times' and the description was intriguing enough to get me hooked.
Obviously, it wasn't to be had in that small town perfumery nor in the big town perfumery where I sometimes went, one would have to go to Paris, I suspect, and I was 18 or so and a small town girl with small town parents who totally wouldn't let me go anywhere only to spend a fortune on something as useless as perfume.
I never liked those young, fresh, light, whatever fragrances intended for teenage girls. My first real perfume was Le Male. Sweet but rather heavy and with some sort of barbershop pungency that was damn far away from whatever I was offered as suitable for a teenage girl. I got a sample when I was buying some makeup thingy and I was hooked ever since, I have my third bottle now and I've never got fed up with this one.
Then there was Liberté Acidulée from the Les Belles series by Nina Ricci. It blends nicely with the abovementioned Le Male, rendering it somehow more tolerable to mothers who think it weird that girls wear stuff advertised to guys.
Fast forward many years. I randomly got Aqua Allegoria Gentiana from the internetz, the most evil enabler tool, because I like gentians and I liked the picture on the box.
Shortly after, a friend pointed me to perfume blogosphere and I recalled the buried but not dead enchantment of Djedi. I googled something, I read lots of stuff and I was caught. I wandered around sniffing things, discovered the differences, found out how things work... and while learning so much new, I also got the knowledge on the fame and tradition of Maison Guerlain.

At present, I have, lemme think, seven or so of their fragrances. Their Chamade proved one of the biggest disappointments in the perfume world to me - after an enthusiastic review, I bought it without trying and it totally stank on me. After certain research and several other experiences ranging from plainly bad to crazily bad, I discovered that some fragrances that combine white flowers and citruses just turn to a litterbox that hadn't been cleaned for a few days. Or, cat piss, to put it bluntly. Upon further research, I discovered that unfortunately, whatever component combination causes it, it is present in most of the contemporary Guerlain fragrances. No Guerlain for me, I thought sadly.

Meantime, I got to know Helg and we started an ongoing debate (very enriching for me and I only hope that the feeling is reciprocal, I feel way too often that I'm asking silly question) about fragrances and history and whatever other theme sprang up. She gave my cat piss issue a thought and generously sent me several handfuls of samples of rare and/or vintage Guerlain fragrances. I was caught again and decided to give Guerlain another chance. Under the impression that I'd better search for the scents that are not available totally everywhere, I tried Purple Fantasy whose combination of pepper and violets I found interesting but not totally convincing (I mix it with Beige sometimes, Beige is way too elegant for me). I got a sample of Parure which I quite liked, but I wasn't sure whether I liked it enough to actually get it - it has been discontinued for quite a time and not to be found exactly cheap. Following Helg's advice, I grabbed it when I had the chance, to have it and meditate upon my liking later and I didn't regret that, after all, I like it. And the sucrier bottle could serve as an assault weapon, should such a need arise. Helg also told me that Djedi is unwearable and that I'd better get some Onda which she called a modern rendition of Djedi.

And, around the time when I was pondering about Parure, Djedi appeared on eBay. It sold for more money than I would like to spend and for even more that I could afford to spend (and I did have some extra for such case. After some research in the internetz, I was aware of them crazy collector maniacs). Bite it all, I thought to myself. I'll get a sample somewhere for reference purposes and now, being cured from the obsession, I can move on. And then I bought some books and a new tank top instead, keeping the savings for whatever else life may bring.

In another meantime and another mean-place, J. got me a bottle of Fleur de Feu. It arrived by guerilla mail two days ago, along with some yarn. (Indeed, I haven't written anything on knitting since forever, it seems! I'll fix it soon.) Helg has a lovely review, I've limited myself only to enjoying the carnation and pepper combination. I've found at least two Guerlain creations I enjoy enough to reward me for the disappointment and I've found that missing bit of inner peace... and now I can shift my attention somewhere else.

No, you don't see it wrong. The bottle is that HUGE.