The movie “Memento” told a story in reverse, the viewer descending into the future by being pulled step by step into the past. It seems like the right technique to describe the current trajectory of the world’s most legendary perfume house.
2006: Guerlain introduces its new perfume. The first alarm goes off with the name, Insolence. When it arrives, no one knows what to say. This is Guerlain? I would say Insolence is a fragrance marketers might make for Hilary Duff, which Elizabeth Arden recently did, calling it With Love ... Hilary Duff, a slightly daring perfume that could actually work in Saks Fifth Avenue. Guerlain, on the other hand, has produced a scent for malls. This is, remember, the house that created Vetiver and Sous le Vent, the house that arguably invented modern perfume in 1889 with Jicky. Insolence, by contrast, smells like fruit compote sprinkled with Splenda: aesthetically nondescript, except for the adjective “meretricious,” spiritually flat, its materials slightly cheap-smelling. Inside the industry they speak of Insolence grimly, as of a suicide. Why did LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton buy this gem of a house if the gem is to be mounted in tin? Equally baffling: Insolence was made by an extremely talented perfumer, Maurice Roucel.
2003: Guerlain introduces L’Instant de Guerlain, created by Roucel, and the joy in the industry is palpable. It seemed as if Guerlain were losing its way. There was the disastrous launch of the sickly sweet Champs-Elysées, and then Cherry Blossom, a fruity redo of Bulgari’s Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert that was perfectly fine if you were Escada. Not Guerlain. L’Instant is not an immortal perfume; it has neither the requisite deep innovation nor the necessary strangeness. But it is an excellent one. With an artist’s touch, Roucel has built a rich, substantive floral mated to a linear, internationalist-school structure: exquisite blossoms in sunlight passing through space-age glass, like flowers in a super-modern airport. Its DNA is taken most precisely from Guerlain’s 1912 modernist masterpiece, L’Heure Bleue, a strange, ghostly scent way ahead of its time. Suddenly, LVMH’s purchase of Guerlain in 1994 makes sense. Its chairman, Bernard Arnault, understands that of all the LVMH brands, only Guerlain can combat Chanel. Arnault will use Guerlain to create top-of-the-market scents for his luxury conglomerate. He will make Guerlain Guerlain.
1919: It is impossible to overestimate Guerlain’s dominance. It has an exquisite new boutique at 68 Champs-Élyées, and Jicky was succeeded by the gorgeous Après l’Ondée in 1906. Now comes Mitsouko. Jacques Guerlain has built it of oak moss, wood and the ripe peach-skin scent of gamma-undecalactone. Mitsouko is a thing of subtle silk opulence: strength and balance and twilight. I imagine that in the Chinese opium dens, just as the opium eaters begin to lose consciousness, they perceive a similarly magical smell drifting from their pipes. If Mitsouko is not five stars, no perfume is. Now everything is possible for Guerlain. Its name will become only stronger and its perfumes more glorious.
