A most obscure Guerlain! "Guerlain Marie Claire"~fragrance review

There was a time when Guerlain had an honestly more daring approach to everything they did. Daring in not being condescending to their audience; daring in presenting something that recalled more "barbarian" approaches which challenged the tastes of the times instead of going with the flow; daring in that they ventured into presenting something for the readers of a very popular magazine, which managed to be a thing of beauty and not some liquid complaisant trash for juvenile air-heads.

In 1996 Guerlain created a limited edition feminine fragrance for the readers of French edition of Marie Claire, simply called... "Marie Claire". A discerning collector with whom I am in correspondence sent me some to try it out and it was a revelation smelling it and comparing it to more current tastes running the gamut in the brand's offerings. Simply put Marie Claire is a "fleurs blanches" type of fragrance, a white florals sonata that is a throwback to 1948. Why 1948? Because this is when Fracas by Robert Piguet came out, a fragrance of such a dedicated following that it shows no signs of abating. The almost brutal approach of Germaine Cellier (1909-1976) in instisting on short formulae, which targeted bull's eye, manifested itself into creating the most ebullient, the most expansive and the most complacent tuberose in existence; a fragrant labrosone typhoon for women with personalities that announce their arrival from two blocks away. One almost expects a military band with euphonia trumpeting coming marching on at any minute!

Guerlain's Marie Claire is taking a page off that book and dresses it in the dusky, fetish-clad in vinyl skin of tuberose and what seems like jasmine-y ylang ylang to render an interpretation of that effect of glaring luminosity and abysmal darkness. And all that, just imagine, at the height of the popularity of L'Eau d'Issey and all those oceanic scents that acted as chastity belts for modern Victorians! The base of Guerlain Marie-Claire seems to be earthy, vetiver-rich, a memento of dry Guerlain bases from Djedi onwards; it has the caliginous ambience of a basement where dead bodies are slowly decaying over which a garden with the most dramatic flowers is growing nevertheless as a red herring.
What I was completely struck by is the awesome radiance of the fragrance which emitted its strong emanations even before spraying it and by the prolonged evaporation which lasted for days on a blotter which I used, remaining true to the very end. What can I say? If Guerlain deemed a commercial commemoration to be so worthy of attention, I sure wish they'd do more of those.

NB. Guerlain Marie-Claire was in fact re-issued in 1999 under the name Belle Epoque in the long fluted perfume bottle that is called "the umbrella bottle". 

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Guerlain series

Pic "Bewegung" by Rudolph Koppitz

Online voting for Fifi awards has begun

Online voting for The 2009 FiFi Awards & Celebration officially opens at 12:01am EST tonight, April 27th, 2009. A complete list of this year's nominees can be found at:(Fifi My Space)
There's also a Facebook GiveAway for a chance to win a full size set of this year's FiFi Stars. You only have until April 29th, 2009 to enter your chance for the first round of prizes, so if you haven't yet, swing by and check out the details. Find the official rules at:Facebook FIFI giveaway)

Click the buttons below to cast your vote!

Fifi Awards finalist: what a joyful surprise!

It was my utter surprise and pleasure to see I made it to top 5 finalists at the 2009 FiFi Awards Nominees out of more than a hundred submissions from top venues! The article cited in the "Editorial Excellence in Fragrance Coverage" category is "Jean Claude Ellena is all about the Dirt!" and was submitted by my hard-working editor at Sniffapalooza Magazine, Raphaella Brescia Barkley, who believed in it from the start (and good thing too, as I wasn't even aware of the contest regulations and never submitted anything myself!) Can I say I'm overwhelmed? (Especially since I'm writing in a foreign language.)

The Editorial Excellence in Frgrance Coverage (Blog category) is an historic appreciative gesture on the part of The Fragrance Foundation for the quality work that is being conducted on online venues, legitimising them as editorial vehicles. My congratulations to all the winners, sincere thanks to the Fragrance Foundation panel and it's wonderful to belong to such an interesting community!

You can read my article on this link and see the full list of finalists here.

And to celebrate the happy occassion and thank my loyal readers, may I extend a lucky draw for a 10ml decant of my favourite fragrances of all: Jubilation 25 by Amouage! (Draw is open till 30th of April, midnight)

Disclaimer: the scent was bought on my own hard-earned cash!

The Galaxy Tastes of Raspberries and Smells of Rum

Apparently the unifying logic of the Universe has a sweet n' sour tooth! Ethyl formate, which gives raspberries their flavour and smells of rum, has now been found in deep space, the center of our galaxy. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, were searching for evidence of amino acids ~and consequently evidence of the building blocks of life~ in a giant dust cloud at the heart of our Milky Way when they came up with the surprising discovery.

Amino acids found in interstellar space can be said to be astrobiologists' Holy Grail because amino acids are the building blocks of proteins (critical for complex life to exist anywhere in the universe); a fact which would therefore indicate the possibility of emerging life on other planets after being seeded with the molecules.
In 2008, astronomers Arnaud Belloche and Robin Garrod almost managed to come across amino acids in space when they discovered amino acetonitrile, a molecule that can be the building block of aminoacids and consequently proteins. Previously, astronomers had detected a variety of large molecules, including alcohols, acids and chemicals called aldehydes. Those chemicals form when pre-existing chemicals on dust grains, such as ethanol, link together to make more complex chains. But recent discoveries suggest the molecules are as large as the simplest amino acid, glycine, which is heartnening.

The astronomers used the IRAM telescope in Spain to shift through signals and electromagnetic radiation emitted by Sagittarius B2, a dust cloud around a newborn star at the centre of our galaxy. Failing to locate any aminoacids, they nevertheless came across ethyl formate, a chemical responsible for the flavour of raspberries. But ethyl formate has another distinguishing quality that ties it with scent ~it smells of rum! Talk about boozy -inspired creation! Yet evidence for the deadly chemical propyl cyanide was also present in the same cloud, making them the largest yet discovered molecules in deep space and food for philosophical thought around the duality of life and death; but perhaps that's fodder for another discussion.

In a witty quip Belloche replied as to whether the galaxy tastes of raspberries that: "[Ethyl formate] does happen to give raspberries their flavour, but there are many other molecules that are needed to make space raspberries!" Dr Belloche and his colleague Robin Garrod at Cornell University in New York have amassed nearly 4,000 distinct signals from Sagitarius B2, analysing about half of them so far. "We have identified around 50 molecules in our survey, and two of those had not been seen before" said Belloche. The results are being presented at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science at the University of Hertfordshire.


News via Guardian.co.uk, pic Raspberries, Rubus ideaus L, after passive self-pollination (left and middle) and open insect pollination (right). (Photo by Jim Cane, Bee Research Institute, Longan, USA) via what-is-this.com

Images of Chanel No.5 aboard a train....

With the anticipation building for the new campaign for Chanel No.5 aboard the Orient Expess en route to Constantinople/Istanbul, uniting new Chanel face Audrey Tautou (the protagonist of an upcoming film on the life of Coco Chanel, as analysed here) and a beautiful stranger (Travis Davenport) entranced by her perfume, we're all awaiting to see how the new spirit will materialise in the short film by Jean Pierre Jeunet (of Amélie and Delicatessen fame).

The good people at Chanel sent me a link with a teaser sequence of fragmented shots of the new mini-film which lasts 2.5 minutes and took 3 weeks to shoot in Paris studios, central France and Istanbul.

Take a look clicking on this link (and click on the other "titles" as well) and prepare yourselves for the full clip on May 5, symbolically in tandem with the perfume's number...

We will return with full commentary!

Pics from Vogue.fr, hellomagazine.ca, maxitendance.com