Jean Paul Gaultier Divine: fragrance review

Back in August 2023, Jean Paul Gaultier launched Gaultier Divine, the brand's new feminine fragrance, classified as a gourmand marine floral. American actress Yara Shahidi has been selected to represent the new fragrance, imagined as a celebration of femininity. It is signed by perfumer Quentin Bisch and is made of floral, gourmand, and marine notes. For Gaultier Divine the bet was on creating something that young women would want for themselves and everyone would like having them approach them. 

Gaultier Divine capitalizes on the marine semiotics which the Gaultier team has used ever since the cool matelot-clad sailor for Le Male. The marine theme is very tongue-in-cheek. On the one hand the homoerotic nuances of sailors, on the other the salty touch of the new fragrance aimed at women. The fragrance is depicted on women gazing at men at sea. But it's all a tempest in a bottle! The allusion to a scent that would create a similar tempest on those smelling it is not lost upon us. The women playfully cajole and seduce the sailor trapped inside this bottle. It's cleverer than a simple seduction trick in advertising and subtle enough that it does not scream sexist or cliché.

 

Solar fragrances are probably the genre into which I would classify this creation. The term solar fragrance notes (on which I have written extensively) expresses the essence of sunshine and the appeal of endless sugar-spun sands, or the embrace of tanned, warm skin. A perfumer uses helional and mainly salicylates to render this effect, sometimes heliotrope synthetics, too. Flower accents of tiare, frangipani, and ylang-ylang, contribute to this exotic field, alongside mimosa, coconut, vanilla, and salty or marine notes. But not all are used in Gaultier Divine which is as airy as a meringue.

pic borrowed from confessions of baking queen

Calypsone stands here for the iodic facets of oakmoss, as well as watery facets in the floral bouquet of Gaultier Divine, as the interplay between watery and yet non-sweet is beautifully rendered amidst the heart notes. My initial personal impression upon spraying is that someone crossed the bridge between the intensely solar-salicylate chord of Lys Soleia (Guerlain Aqua Allegoria), which was a bit too summery, and the much more delicate treatment of lily-salicylate in Vanille Galante (Hermessences). The latter, although baptized vanilla, is really a lily, the kind with white waxy petals and red stamens, spicy and sweet, yet alluring and mesmerizing. Benzyl salicylate has been the mainstay of this sort of genre, with benzyl amyl and cis 3 hexenyl, the mothership of solar fragrances. I am hypothesizing that Bisch is working his magic in Gaultier Divine with the salicylate molecule Karmaflor he has access to, if only to bypass the rationing of salicylates due to IFRA restrictions, but also to tie it to Mahonial (a lily synthetic) and Nympheal (a watery molecule that has flowery, lotus and lily facets). Lilies do have a salty nuance themselves, as deliciously explored in the once poetic Lys Mediterranee (it has now been tampered with somewhat).

The base is crafted through the synergy of mainly vanilla and benzoin, with subtly caramelic facets and a clean musk, but always balanced by the salty-lily drenched in the sea breeze chord — never too sweet like many other gourmands. It's the balancing act of a skilled equilibrist.

 

The effect of Gaultier Divine is therefore beautifully crunchy. A little bit salty, it resembles munching on savory toffee with fleur de sel snippets scattered in it, resisting to the tooth, like...exactly, an airy meringue. A success!

 Available as eau de parfum.

 

Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male: fragrance review of a best-seller

Back in 1995 when this Francis Kurkdjian composed fragrance launched Le Male didn't look like it would become that huge in popularity. Jean Paul Gaultier's first masculine fragrance (programmatically named Le Male) was honestly too sweet for the times. No man would capitulate to such a sweet scent surely? And I'm saying this in full knowledge that the archAngel of sweetness came out 3 years before. Angel by Mugler was still too sweet by any mass market standards in 1995 and a very slow commercial success in the market; it took confidence and patience to make it the monument that it is. Le Male followed an analogous path though a bit more speedy thanks to its intended audience.

via

Le Male was evidently camp with its rippled torso and sailor paraphernalia. It was made by a French brand, for Pete's sake, fronted by a "crazy" looking guy always dressed in a matelot top! But it caught on spectacularly because of a very specific reason. It caught on first with the fashion congnoscenti and the tasteful homosexuals who were drawn to its campy imagery and gender bender advertising aesthetics. Truth be told gay men with fashion savvy often have an uncanny ability to focus on just what is right and works in the style stakes and predict trends. Evidently all strides of life favoured it commercially in the end. The advertisements and the scent were so tongue-in-cheek that you couldn't ridicule it no matter what one's orientation were; it had a healthy portion of self-sarcasm to carry it through.

Composition-wise the sweet lavender over coumarin-vanilla recalls a hint of classic fougère specimens, but the execution is nothing but. To better view this one can do a side by side experiment with a classic sweet lavender built on coumarin notes; Caron's Pour Un Homme. Whereas the Caron is a fist in a velvet glove Le Male is rubber band or nitrile gloves that slap shapely buttocks in jest.You can detect the modern musks which make this powerful. Or at least which used to make this powerful and very long lasting. I hear it doesn't last as long nowadays though my last personal testing is a couple of years old to be honest.

Now that fragrances for men have become increasingly sweet, Le Male continues to be popular with all ages of men (fathers and sons alike), but especially young ones who have rediscovered it. Quite a feat for something older than the age of its wearers!

Jean Paul Gaultier Classique: fragrance review & history

Uncanningly similar to the dressmaker's dummy bottle of Shocking by Schiaparelli (1935), a powerful and iconic animalic oriental of a long lost era, fashion's enfant terrible Jean Paul Gaultier began his career in perfumes with his own -originally eponymous (1993), later renamed Classique- Schocking copy bottle, that hid a floriental of intense sweetness and powderiness. The inspiration for Gaultier was his beloved and -we surmiss- glamorous grandmother's vanity with its vats of face powder and nail polish remover smelling of acetone. Interestingly the perfume however plays with this perception of femininity in nuanced ways which defy an accurate transliteration. Despite all that, it's a perfume I can't really stomach, but it deserves its own analysis.

Eye-Catching Looks for Classique
But it is the bottle and presentation that will go down in history, originally in a pink metal corset, later given a frosted glass costume over the smooth glass body of the bottle, so to speak; and then given all kind of variations in all the colours and patterns of the rainbow for limited editions and summer flankers. The box gives an avant-garde touch; like shipped cargo, functional and brown-beige, while the bottle is encased inside the box in a metal can, "like the ones for cat food at the supermarket", as Gaultier put it. Meow....
The commercials were equally eye-catching and memorable, with variations on the theme of femininity, conceived by master image creator Jean Baptiste Mondino to the soundtrack of Casta Diva from Bellini's Norma, as sung by Maria Callas.

Interestingly, if we're to examine the feminist and cultural subtext of the perfume visuals, the Jean Pauls Gaultier commercials themselves have become markedly tamer and tamer as the years went by, reflecting a more sedate "sexy" view of femininity, a conservative retake on the mistress which marks her man's memory with her perfume (alongside her corset and high heels; a panoply of restrictive femme gear that places woman on the pedestral of an object) Contrast with the eclectic bunch of sui generis characters sharing one common element: their love for JPG perfume from two decades ago. Or the apogee of quirkiness in a gay gender playing game in the combined commercials for Le Male and Classique from 2002.
Even the models were quirkier looking back then (Eve Salvail with her trademark shaved head, Kristen McMenamy with her irregular features...to the predictable beauty of Michelle Buswell) and we're just talking about nothing further than the 1990s.


Alice Classique commercial from 1995


Le Diner Classique commercial from 1997


Classique & Le Male commercial from 2002

Scent Description
The opening of Classique is rich in mandarin orange, peach, plum and cassis (a synthetic base that recaretes a berry/currant note), sherbety and sparkling-waxy thanks to the sheen provided by decanal (aldehyde C10), a characteristic element in the archetype No.5. The metaphor of nail polish is made through benzyl acetate, possessing jasmine-like and pear-drops notes. The heart is predictably rosy like the hue of the juice inside, with powerful cinnamic roses and damascones (synthesized molecules that give off intensely rosy-fruity tonalities) given an even fatter nuance by the inclusion of orange flower and ylang ylang, indolic and lushly sweet. A faint hint of spice is accounted by lily and ginger, but it's weak to really characterise the composition as a spicy floral; it resolutely stays within the sweet fruity floral with a wink to the floriental direction.
It is imperative that one loves powdery nuances in fragrances to like Classique, as the quite powdery base is built on a contrast of woody-amber Ambrox with vanillin, the two building to epic proportions of  intense diffusion. A little orris note opens an interesting discourse of dryness in the base, beneath the amber-vanilla there is a musky-earthy footnote with a hint of animal; perhaps an ironic meta-comment on Shocking itself by perfumer Jacques Cavallier? Not enough, hidden under the syrup...




Le Boudoir Classique commercial from 2007


L'Appartment Classique commercial from 2009

The Perfumer's References & the Zeitgeist
Cavallier did cite classics, such as Chanel No.5, within the formula but interjected modern elements as well resulting in what proved to be a contemporary commercial hit. You might be forgiven for thinking Classique is va-va-voom material, only it is so for those people who can't help being a bit too flamboyant. For all its intensity and almost cloying fruitiness, it escaped the seal of "powerhouse" that Dior's Poison or CK Obsession bore in the previous decade. The era was ripe for a disruptive aesthetic so  the blinding paleness of aquatics and the surypy element of "fruities" led this dance.

JPG's Classique consolidated its place by playing upon an idea that had already found its culmination in Lancome's Tresor in 1990: The peachy rosiness of Sophia Grosjman's modern classic had been the building block upon which a thousand beauty products from lotions and hair products to fine fragrance and fabric softener followed. Tresor's formula has plenty to admire in, but perhaps it's too ubiquitous to claim one's own. But whereas Tresor achieves the perilous balance of naturally lush bosom kept under decorum thanks to its solid perfume structure, Classique for all its rosy girlishness shows rather too much nipple for my taste.

Ma Dame by Jean Paul Gaultier: fragrance review

Ma Dame, a spoof on the French word "Madame" which could be translated as "my lady" is Gaultier's latest feminine fragrance. A fresh floral blend of rose, sour orange, grenadine, musk and cedar Ma Dame aims to distill the essence of a modern-day garçonne, or "Une fille au masculin, un garçon au féminin" (a masculine girl, a feminine boy) like the song goes. “Ma Dame is not a Madame,” declared the designer (in the sense of a brothel-keeper or bourgeois lady). He puts the emphasis on the "ma" more than the "dame" part. “She is my muse. She amuses me.” (quote via the Moodie Report). I like word-plays. I like that he used a word-play to explain one, too!

Gaultier also explained he loves the bright pink of highlighters and attempted thus to bottle the imagined "scent" of one of his favourite shades. “It’s almost electric,” Gaultier says to Elle magazine. “The perfect color to make into a fragrance.“ Liking the highlighting almost fuschia shade is nothing ground-breaking, as press releases would like you to think; so do I, as I use it to highlight much more "agressive" art listings that depict ancient warriors and cthonian deities and my tastes run a more conservative gamut than dear Jean Paul's. “I didn’t fit in well with the kids in school,” Gaultier continues the confession to Elle. “While the other boys were playing sports, I was busy sketching!” At this point I am beginning to think that Gaultier and I share some degrees of Kevin Bacon! (something that would have my father in stiches)

The commercial for Ma Dame directed by Jean Baptist Mondino has supermodel du jour Agyness Deyn (also seen in Burberry The Beat commercials) literally tearing up the scene, snipping a long platinum wig, ripping off her sleeves, cutting her pant legs with a scissor (an allusion to the ripping that needs to be done in order to access the bottle inside the carton), all the while dancing to the beat of dj.Miss Kittin ~in a remix of "3rd Sex" by French group Indochine. She ends this on the sweet side with a kiss on the cheek of Gaultier himself.
Supposedly the aim of Ma Dame is to shed the cumbersome ideals of femininity for a rebellious, modern, cutting-edge interpretation. The French catch phrase is: ‘Interdit aux dames’ (NOT for ladies), but they changed it to “For the woman who is unique, unconventional, different” in English. Tag anything with a prohibition and you create intrigue. The rectangular bottle that features in its heart the torso bottle of Gaultier's best-selling Classique (by perfumer Jacques Cavallier) set in relief gives the game away though: we're far off the land of controversy or rebeliousness and the only thing that is ambivalent about this fragrance is the decision quota of its intended clientelle. Seeing the street credence of punky (but perfectly angelically-featured) Agyness Deyn makes one think they're buying into a slice of the wild side and the brand is obviously aware of the public being in the know about Gaultier's edgy reputation (how ironic that it is his jackets cut with scalpel-precision that are the best hidden thing about his line)

Sniffing or spraying Ma Dame is a violent surprise at first: an intense, eye-searing blast of citrusy sweet shampoo latheriness jolts you like the lightsabers used in Star Wars, this time hued Bright Fuschia for the person who teeters between Luke Skywalker and Prince Leia (this is the 00s!). The shade and feel has been described as "lurid pink" by Mrs.Veneering on POL and I couldn't find a more perfect description. The composition by talented, almost in-house* nose Francis Kurkdjian (from the Takasago team) revisits the canned peach-candy orange-pink lotus in hysterics of Classique smothered in vats of vanillic powder and a prolonged white musk drydown that is anodyne more than androgyne; in fact the more they dry-down the more they're indistinguishable to me. Thankfully Ma Dame is not cloying like Classique can be, mostly thanks to a very fresh treatment of alleged cedar which veers on aquatic: it's utterly synthetic-smelling and sanitised like being dressed in futuristic tinfoil which is a new direction that Gaultier ommited to include in his amazingly wonderful costumes for the "Fifth Element". Ma Dame is mischievous and diabolical enough in that it will make you wonder whether this is good or bad which I hope reveals humour behind its creation. To take you out of the dilemma I have one admission to make: it's nothing I would wear myself. Consider yourselves accordingly advised.



Nota bene the creative prowess behind the bottle design: the transparent spray mechanism is invisible!

Official notes for Ma Dame
Top: Orange Zest, Grenadine
Heart: Fresh Rose velvet, floral Notes
Base: Cedar, Musk

Available at major department stores since September, 50ml/1.7oz for $95 of Eau de toilette (also available at 100ml/3.4oz). Matching body products as well.

*taking into consideration he's responsible for Gaultier's Fragile, Gaultier 2, Le Male and Fleur du Male.

Pic of Agyness Deyn and Jean Paul Gaultier via zimbio.com Pic of bottle via Vogue.com

Fleur du Mâle: fragrance review

It was Charles Beaudelaire, the iconoclast 19th century “damned poet” who had said: “My soul travels on the smell of perfume like the souls of other men on music.”And because he has written poetry that transcends the Victorian of his times into the daring exploration of the erotic in quite a frank way, reminding the world that women and men smelled of quite a lot of things, “good” and “bad” as well, he is often referenced in perfume discussion as a resource of brilliancy in olfactory description and imagery.
It was not surprising then that his collection of poems titled "Les Fleurs du Mal" (flowers of evil) has been half the inspiration behind the new Gaultier masculine fragrance, Fleur du Mâle, which plays upon the word Mal in such a way as to remind as of Le Mâle (the masculine), the first perfume in the line that proved to be such a bestseller and which is still making huge profits for the company after more than a decade after its launch in 1995.

Le Mâle was a very tongue in cheek creation by nose Francis Kurkdjian both in presentation and aroma, as it capitalized on the popular gay reference of the sailor with its mattelot top and Breton insouciance torso bottle, clean shaven men in the ads and gym-rippled muscles, though ~ hardly the hardship of a real sailor! It explored avenues of the classic fougère construction, a recipe that imitates the smell of ferns in a forest, usually based on lavender. Lavender thus it was that dominated the ambience of Le Mâle, but with such a potent sweetness and cuddliness alongside as to toss the commonly butch image of the classic fougère and render it quite daring in the arsenal of the male of the species. Many men report that it has worked wonders in their pursuit of the opposite sex (or even the same sex when playing for that team) judging by the following it has on various discussion boards; which consolidates the fact that it is actually mostly women who go after the sweet touch in perfume and not vice versa as is so often touted to be.

So what does Fleur du Mâle have to offer anew? According to the press release in Women’s Wear Daily Léa Vignal-Kenedi,, head of the fragrance division of Jean Paul Gaultier, said: “Over the past 12 years [since the introduction of the original Le Mâle], many barriers have been lifted for men." Gaultier “…wanted to speak of this blooming of today's masculinity, of joie de vivre, of happiness" . Let’s not forget that this is the brand that introduced makeup for men in the form of bronzers, liners and light balms in their line Le Beau Mâle.
It seems that men are focused on in a new way and there has been lots of talk about the overabundance of orange blossom in the formula of the new fragrance, a note associated with happiness, lightness, freshness in a floral way, while simultaneously the new scent carries on the fougère accord of the original.
The new scent is composed by the same man, the very talented Takasago’s perfume nose Francis Kurkdjian, responsible for some of the most successful -in my personal opinion- fragrances of recent years such as the abstract beauty of Narciso for Her , the vague and delicate poise of Rose Barbare by Guerlain , almost the entire perfume stable of Gaultier (Le Mâle, Fragile and Gaultier2, with the notable exception of Classique), Armani Mania for men with its classy accords, the light velvet and yellow cotton of Cologne Blanche for the exclusive line of Dior and the smooth skin baked in the sun of Aquasun by Lancaster.
Mr.Kukdjian excels in rendering abstract accords of ambience music with a smooth progression and a slightly powdery feel that departs from the mossy feel of old or the makeup smell of traditional face powder, rendering interpretations of them in a modern and young way that seems fresh and new.

It almost illustrates this passage below from Beaudelaire:
“Exotic Perfume”
Islands of Lethe where exotic boughs
Bend with their burden of strange fruit bowed down,
Where men are upright, maids have never grown
Unkind, but bear a light upon their brows.
Led by that perfume to these lands of ease,
I see a port where many ships have flown
With sails out wearied of the wandering seas…

Although orange blossom is lauded as the dominant note in this new offering, even pictured in the advertising images which depict a young happy smiling male in a white tub full of white petals shot by Jean-Baptiste Mondino (how probable would that be realistically? I’m asking you), I am betting that there isn’t any actual orange blossom essence in there and the whole is rendered through the alchemy of synthetic components, just like in his masterful Narciso for Her which also supposedly features an orange blossom top note in the Eau de toilette concentration. This is orange blossom through the lens of a kaleidoscope, not the essential oil or absolute that is rendered by the actual blossom. And I am not saying that to diminish its value, because it creates an effect that is indescribable and very pleasing indeed. Along with a sharper and slightly bitter note of petit-grain (which makes a very brief opening impression), the light florancy is paired with the sustained fluffiness of copious amounts of hay-like coumarin and what smells to my nose like heliotropin, much as has already been explored in Cologne Blanche by Dior, to which I would designate this one as the more common, low-brow but equally interesting relative. Aspirations of grandeur are not present in Fleur du Mâle and why should there be anyway: it aims to please and comfort the wearer and the entourage and it succeeds admirably on both accounts as it has very good lasting power on the skin (through the next day even, in my personal test) and a pleasant, yet non-invasive sillage that is very welcome.
The white torso bottle in a white tin, which echoes the original blue one of Le Mâle, is tamer and not as ironic as the latter, something that is reflected in the advertising images as well, rendering this one more feminine and less likely to be picked up by a man, although of course blinkered approach does not work well in most perfume choices where individuality and taste matter more than arbitrary distinctions of what constitutes male and female. It remains to be seen if it will actually be bought by men all by themselves.
Instead I picture that the actual target group of the fragrance will prove to be women of all ages who will revel in its cloudy softness that resembles a Claude Monet sunset.
I for one would love to receive this.


Fleur du Mâle is available in 40, 75 and 125ml bottles of eau de toilette and an alcohol-dree deodorant stick, in major department stores.

Painting San Giorgio Maggiore by twilight by Claude Monet courtesy of fulcrumgallery.com. Pic of ad courtesy of Escentual.