Guerlain RE-Issues 4 Archive Perfumes for their Heritage Collection: Fragrance Descriptions & Photos

The work that Guerlain is doing lately, bringing back their catalogue masterpieces for educational purposes at Champs Elysees, adhering to the original formulae no less, is remarkable. To the already impressive line-up four more vintage Guerlain perfumes are brought to life thanks to the work of in-house perfumer Thierry Wasser and Frédéric Sacone. They are the following.

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1900 CHYPRE de PARIS in parfum extrait 
Contrary to what many people have in mind, the Guerlain Chypres came out before the famous Coty Chypre from 1917 {For a comprehensive reason as to why, please refer to my article on Chypre Fragrances Facts and The Origins of Chypre Perfume} [N.B. There is also Guerlain Chypre 53, a different fragrance]
A top of citrus and lavender gives way to the floral notes of pink jasmine, ylang iris, orange blossom, flanked by cascarilla, calamus, mossy chyprish notes, patchouli, and spicy accents of nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla and balsamic notes.

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Sous le Vent by Guerlain: fragrance review (vintage vs.re-issue)

"Funny business, a woman's career. The things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them when you get back to being a woman." The apothecary splash bottle of Sous le Vent by Guerlain resting atop my dresser with its black, disk-shaped label with gold lettering encircling it, makes me think of the logos of old cinematic companies long defunct starring dramatic heroines with high cheekbones hissing deathly lines clad in impeccable tweeds or gala-time smooth silks. Betty Davies in "All About Eve" comes to my mind as she utters those lines, her character in stark contrast to the outwardly maudlin yet steel-hearted assistant-cum-antagonist Eve Harrington.

Although a literal translation would indicate "in the wind", Sous le Vent is French for "leeward" after the name of the tropical Leeward Isles of the lesser Antilles in the Caribbean: indeed the islands are divided into Windward and Leeward groups. Many among those "greener than a dream" isles were colonised by the French, accounting for an interesting, non-coincidental analogy ~the fruit of the Americas which has been Frenchified into Créole. Sous le Vent was composed by Jacques Guerlain for Joséphine Baker in 1933, according to the charming pamphlet provided by the boutique, as a pick-me up for applying after her notorious dance performances in which she often appeared in nothing more than an all too brief skirt made out of bananas on a string. Strutting her proud gazelle frame in the streets of Paris with a pet leopard in tow made everyone forget about Freda Josephine McDonald's humble St.Louis, Missouri birthplace and her vaudeville beginnings, evoking instead the glamourised image of a jungle animal: fierce, supple, ready to leap! And long before Angelina Jolie and Mia Farrow, she had adopted her own Rainbow Tribe: 12 multi-ethnic orphans, proving that titillation of the public and activism aren't mutually exclusive.

It is of interest to note in the iconography of Guerlain print material on their 20s and 30s scents that Sous Le Vent was featured in characteristic illustrations in the "Are you her type" series that included Mitsouko, Vol de Nuit , Liù and Shalimar, indicating that its eclipse among the classics in subsequent years was not due to a lack of intent. Les garçonnes were its natural audience but the ravages of WWII brought other sensibilities to the fore making an angular androgyne scent antithetical to the femme totemism of the new epoch in which the purring, slightly breathless tones of Marilyn Monroe caressed weary ears. It took Guerlain decades to re-issue it; finally a propos the refurbishing of the 68 Champs Elysées flagship store it was the second one to join the legacy collection affectionally called "il était une fois" (=once upon a time) in 2006 after Véga.

I am in the lucky position to be able to compare an older batch of extrait de parfum with my own bottle of the re-issued juice, and although Luca Turin in his latest book claims that the new is very different from his recollection questioning whether it is his memory or Guerlain's "that is at fault", I can attest that the two are certainly not dramatically different. Being a favourite of the black Venus of the merry times between two world wars, should give us a hint that Sous le Vent is a strong-minded affair of great sophistication and caliber. Difficult to wear as a scent to seduce or invite people to come and linger closer due to its acquiline nature, but very fitting as an unconscious weapon for a woman about to close a difficult business deal, embark on a divorce case or hire a professional assassin. It transpires strength! To that effect the vintage parfum offers rich verdancy, a mollified fond de coeur that is perhaps justified by the very nature of the more concentrated, less top-note-heavy coumpound needed for making the extrait or the diminuation of the effervescent citrus top notes. The modern eau de toilette is a little brighter, a little more streamlined and surprisingly a little sweeter in its final stages, yet quite excellent, making it a scent that always puts me in an energetic good mood wherever I apply it lavinshly -because it is alas rather fleeting- from the bottle.

Technically a chypre, yet poised between that and an aromatic fougère* to me, Sous le Vent bears no great relation to the mysterious guiles of Guerlain's Mitsouko but instead harkens back to the original inspiration behind it, Chypre de Coty, but also to another Guerlain thoroughbred ~Jicky (especially on what concerns the aromatic facet of lavender in the latter's eau de toilette concentration). Sous le Vent is both greener and fresher than Mitsouko and Jicky nevertheless, as it eschews the obvious animalic leapings yet retains the cinnamon/clove accent which will later be found in the fantastically "dirty" and underappreciated Eau d'Hermès. All the while however the piquancy that makes Coty's iconic oeuvre as well as Jicky so compelling is unmistakeably there.

Sous le Vent starts with a rush of subtly medicinal top notes of herbs that smell like lavender, rosemary and tarragon, a full spectrum of Provençal aromata. A tart bergamot note along with what seems like bitterly green galbanum skyrocket the scent into the territory of freshness and a smart "clean". Its next stage encompasses dry accords, soon mollified by the heart chord of a classic chypre composition of dusty moss with the sweet tonality of generous flowers that evoke the banana fruit: ylang ylang notably and jasmine sambac. In the final stages I seem to perceive the dusky foliage of patchouli.

Potent and assertive thought it first appears to be, a take-no-prisoners affair for a lady who was known to dance with only a skirt of bananas on, leaving her country for France and being idolized by all social strata, it screams of individualism and élan; yet strangely Sous le Vent, especially the gangly new version, doesn't invoke the scandalising side of Josephine nor her exuberant nature. Complex and elusive, it is certainly not an easy option for today’s women's sensibilities; it is rather too cerebral, too intelligent for its own good, not sexy enough. These qualities however would make it a wonderful masculine addition to a cocky fellow's repertoire. This travel back into more glamorous and individual times is worth the price of admission. Wear it if you are really interesting as a person, it will only enhance that quality.

Notes for Sous le Vent:
Top: bergamot, lavender, tarragon
Middle: jasmine, carnation, green notes
Base: iris, foresty notes, woody notes

The vintage parfum can be found on Ebay from time to time. The current re-issue in Eau de Toilette concentration is part of the Il était une fois collection exclusively sold at boutiques Guerlain and the éspace Guerlain at Bergdorf Goodman, housed in an apothecary style cylindrical bottle of 125ml with a gold thread securing a seal on the cap.

A sample of the modern re-issue will be given to a random lucky reader!

*Fougère is a classic olfactory family -mainly of masculine scents- that relies on a chord of lavender-coumarin-oakmoss.

Pic of Sous le Vent advertisement courtesy of femina.fr
Pic of Josephine Baker costumed for the Danse banane from the Folies Bergère production Un Vent de Folie in Paris (1927) courtesy of Wikimedia commons.

Coty Chypre: fragrant pilgrimage and review

By guest writer Denyse Beaulieu/Carmancanada

When friends complained to Pablo Picasso that the portrait of Gertrude Stein he’d just painted didn’t look like her, he answered something along the lines of: “Don’t worry. It will.”

Though the famous portrait was executed in 1904, well before Coty even dreamt of his mythical Chypre – he’d only just come out with his first fragrance, La Rose Jacqueminot, well anchored in the figurative tradition of perfumery at the time – it is what comes to mind when I try to analyse his 1917 Chypre. Does it in any way resemble its long and illustrious line of descendants, from the me-too Millot Crêpe de Chine or Chypre Sauzé to Jacques Guerlain’s two-tiered answer to his rival, Mitsouko and Sous le Vent, the 1946 double-whammy of Germaine Cellier’s leather-laden Bandit and Edmond Roudnitska’s rich, mulled-spice Femme, on to Christian Dior’s masterful trilogy of Miss Dior (Paul Vacher), Diorling and Diorama (both by Roudnitska), culminating it the very épure of Chypre-ity that is Yves Saint Laurent’s first namesake fragrance, Y…
It would. It will.

Smell Coty Chypre as you would scrutinize the sepia photograph of an ancestor and, yes, you will find the bone structure: bergamot, floral heart, oakmoss and labdanum. But the expression of the face, the inscrutable screen of these eyes and what they were gazing upon, what film passed in front of them as the model posed, how can you penetrate that otherness, sunk in another time?

If Chypre had a gaze, it would have seen the last remnants of the ancient order falling apart. The 19th century rotting in the charnel trenches of the Great War still being fought as it was being composed, bottled and sold; as it adorned the wrists and napes of the last Belle Époque beauties.

Yes, with hindsight, Chypre would come to resemble the family to which it gave its name. But it is set in a world lost to us; a world where heavy blows had already been dealt to our vision of things; the blows out of which the 20th century would emerge. And so it hovers between the old, figurative, narrative order of scent and the invention of modern perfumery – of which François Coty can be said to be the father.

Cubism was already going full steam in 1917. Did Coty like the art? His social and political values would express themselves a few years later, when he bought the daily Le Figaro and used it to express his loathing of communism and his admiration for fascism, Italian style. Though Italian Fascism did, at the outset, attract Modernist movements in art and literature, it would repudiate them for the monumental, pompous art favoured by totalitarian regimes. Perhaps Coty, a powerfully instinctive man as well as a visionary industrialist, had no truck with the Cubists and the Fauves who were the toast of Paris but he did, thanks to his intuition, latch on to the same gesture as his artistic contemporaries. He went primitive; he exhumed the archaic to find the face of modern perfumery. Chypre is not a name chosen by chance: apart from being an island with a powerful perfume tradition (something that the Corsican Coty may well have known), it is the abode of the mighty Aphrodite. Neither the naughty philanderer of late Greek and Roman mythology, nor the slender marble nymph of Classic Greek statuary, or the pearly-fleshed shepherdess of 18th century boudoirs: but the old, stern, primitive, man-eating mistress of the spring renewal of vegetation, the impulse to spring life fed on the death of winter. She sleeps on a bed of earthy moss and pungent herbs, anointed with thick redolent oils of jasmine, bathed in the fumes of sizzling golden resin.

But the goddess is also absolutely modern, in the way that Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon are modern, with their hybrid, primitive African masks and lascivious bordello line-up. François Coty was one of the first – not the first, certainly, for the Guerlains father and son had already used coumarin and vanillin – to fully use the properties of the new synthetics. What’s more, his Chypre is the first step towards abstraction in perfume, which would reach its full expression in Chanel N°5. It doesn’t represent a flower or any other natural odorant; it doesn’t tell a story – unlike its contemporaries, say Guerlain Pois de Senteur or Caron N’Aimez que moi, both launched the same year. Coty had already explored that avenue with his wildly successful L’Origan, mother of the floral orientals, with its methyl-ionone (violet) and dianthine (carnation) accord on an “ambréine” base made of coumarin and vanillin. Edmond Roudnitska called it (I paraphrase, having lost the original reference), “the first modern, brutal perfume”.

Chypre belongs to the same brutal, neo-primitive aesthetics. In the flanks of the 1950s sealed flacon I was lucky enough to acquire, the time-distilled, resinous juice releases a scent that only hints to the later developments of the family. The hesperidic top notes have vanished decades ago, leaving the starring role in the “débouché” – to reprise Roudnitska’s beautiful term – to aromatic herbs, kitchen herbs, really: sage and thyme, and quite possibly vetiver. The floral absolute is jasmine, and it is weighed down with concentrated oils, further pulled into the unctuous base of labdanum, patchouli and oakmoss. In this version, and in the condition it is in, the labdanum’s honeyed, amber notes predominate to pull the composition towards the oriental end of the spectrum. But even in the more modern executions – the 60s eau de cologne, for instance – the amber has pride of place, reinforced by the the vanillin and the hay-like sweetness coumarin. The bitterness and fungus-earthiness of the oakmoss hasn’t yet reached the peak it would when exasperated by isobutyl-quinoline (as in Bandit); or perhaps the vanished bergamot provided the balance between tartness and earthiness. Aphrodite, she of the many guises, is a vegetal goddess: infinitely seductive with her sweet, dizzying fragrances, and willing to take on the adornments of modern chemistry to present a new mask. Her archaic ruthlessness is never far, however, from this attractive surface: Chypre is not a dazzlingly smooth composition like her tawny-flanked daughter Femme would be three decades on, but an assemblage of broad contrasting strokes, grounded on an oriental pedestal of remote antiquity. In a way, it’s amazing that she has given so very different children to so many brilliant perfumers… But she crossed the Mediterranean to visit François Coty in Paris. Perhaps, while kissing him, she bestowed the poisonous gift of hubris, the “sin” (though the term was unknown in Ancient Greece) of exceeding measure and reason through ambition… His disastrous far-right politics and catastrophic divorce ruined Coty, once one of the richest men in the world. He died a pauper. And his Chypre lives on only as a myth – the one scent the majority of perfume lovers dream of seeing risen from the mausoleum of discontinued perfumes – and through her abundant spawn. When you bow your head through time to inhale her essences, it is her daughters you seek. She will come to resemble them. But they can never go back to her utter, arrogant statement.
Pic of Maria Callas from the film by Pasolini "Medea".

Read on the rest of the Chypre Series on Perfume Shrine following the links:

Part 1: origin of chypre fragrances

Part 2: chypre fragrance ingredients and formulae

Part 3: "nouveau chypres" or modern "chypre" fragrances

Part 4: chypre perfume aesthetics

Part 5: chypre perfume chronology and the zeitgeist

Part 6: masculine chypres

Part 7: chypre fragrances time forgot

Marble image of Aphrodite, Artemis and Apollo from the Treasure of Siphnians in Delphi, Greece circa 525BC courtesy of arthist.cla.umn.edu