I consider L’Heure Bleue to be one of, if not the most gorgeous perfume of all time. Created by Jacques Guerlain in 1912, there is nothing else remotely like it. The soft plushness. The anisic heliotrope. The powdered, glorious cushioning of it all, a rich, plumed, shimmering insolence which leaves the most fantastical sillage that asks questions rather than answering them. It is mysterious, rich, yet delicately insouciant – but also quite becomingly flirtatious and very sexy. It was the queen’s perfume for seventy five years. It is the scent of certain friends of mine at certain periods in their lives. And whenever I smelled it on them I would swoon.
While intense – the crushed powder of iris and violets, orange blossom, tuberose, orchid, carnation layered under great bursts of neroli and citruses spiked with star anise and coriander all produce a fireworks in talc that is very particular (a wilful, sensual diffidence), there is also something about the greatly tactile, almost edible iridiscence of the scent that has great appeal and can cross generational and gender lines: at the perfume workshop I gave at the Honolulu Museum Of Art in 2023, as we sat on the humid lawns of the courtyard while white and yellow plumeria gently fell onto the grass and sampled a great variety of perfumes of every type and ilk from many decades of fragrance making, the vintage sample of eau de parfum that Tora had kindly sent to me a few years back was the perfume that got the unanimous vote for Best Scent Of The Day. People were gagging for it. And so the entire vial was used up on various participants who wanted to try it on skin or on card to take home with them. A lot of coohing and conspiratorial nodding. Ah. I see. This is perfume.
Ten years ago or thereabouts I put up a piece on here that was a very in depth conversation with an old university friend staying with us who also loves L’Heure Bleue – we waxed lyrical on its essential nature and went off on a variety of tangents: you can read that conversation here. Kafkaesque gives a phenomenally detailed appraisal of all the various iterations, edt, edp, parfum etc, here. People do go head over heels for L’Heure Bleue.
Since the first knowing L’Heure Bleue I have always craved possessing a bottle of the extrait of my own (which, to my knowledge, is no longer produced by Guerlain. A bottle of the 30ml pure perfume – the same as the one D bought me for my birthday the year before last (like I said in a post earlier this week, I just haven’t managed to get all these essential posts out of me in recent times; there is a backlog) – now goes for over a thousand dollars on eBay, which is why when I espied mine in an antique shop- 40,000 yen, the most expensive perfume I have ever had (I gave him a contribution; we don’t do Christmas presents; just one nice thing plus surprises on our birthdays), I knew that, relatively speaking, it was a bargain- or at least that was what I told myself – but in reality, just a fraction of the current online marketing extortions. From the same shop, I also got a boxed vintage soap – because who wouldn’t want a L’Heure Bleue soap? And I have used both of them together, waiting for the bliss to take off….. …and yet I am sorry to report – this is probably why I didn’t write about it at the time, because I was slightly disappointed by it and felt guilty being even vaguely critical of a masterpiece I was so elated to finally have in my possession – despite its generally L’Heure Bleueish loveliness, it didn’t quite lift me to the rafters. I know Helen had a similar experience with her beloved Apres L’Ondée, whose extrait equivalent is even harder to find now and even more expensive: that perfume is her absolute holy grail, and it smells eye-wateringly exquisite on her – so poetic, joyful and tearful simultaneously – but I also have to say that its parfum version – cold and poisonous as an almond stone – though sublime in its cool bitterness and thus in some ways even more affecting – wasn’t actually as gorgeous as the ‘simple’ (but perfect) daily vintage eau de toilette.
Don’t get me wrong. There is an inherent joy in extraits, as I once wrote here. In the case of certain perfumes, the parfum strength version is the only one I am really interested in. Say Patou 1000, whose edt doesn’t hold a candle to the so much denser, deeply layered and brimming extrait. Shalimar is debatably best in this strength (though I actually love the vintage eaux de cologne just as much); other Guerlains, such as L’Heure Bleue and even Samsara, though, are strangely more attenuated in their supposedly stronger versions – you get far more oomph and immediate splendour in the night time showdown of an edp, or an eighties parfum de toilette (my favourite of all the Guerlains; just a slightly more steroidal lift to the scents that made them mouth salivatingly delicious). It was always the almost doughtnutty friandise of the best L’Heures Bleues that made it what it was; an oozingly patisserie edge under the florals blended in with the benzoins and balsams and vanillas and musks in the base that gave the perfume its unique phosphorescence; it ate the air. I remember a woman cycling past me once, I don’t know where, but my goodness the sillage she was giving off was like a mind-altering drug, hitting me in the head the heart and the gut, floating on the breeze like heliotropinic heaven.
My own parfum, which I am wearing now, is lovely. It is bright, needy; it eventually wants others’ attention. The florals and citruses are vivid and pure. When I first opened it the perfume was all top notes and no base though (could this be an issue of maceration? Will it mellow and deepen from now on?). When used with the soap, which becomes more potent with each lathering – for a while I liked to just leave it in the bathroom and see how it scented the room you get a more intimate totality – I wish I could have that scent there permanently – I remember coming out in the garden afterwards where d was digging some plants and his reaction was blimey you smell powdery – which I am not entirely sure was a compliment – but to get to the more swoonsome levels I require of The Blue Hour for private use – because sometimes you just need to sink into its feathery blue down – I just add some vintage Shalimar eau de toilette in the general environs of the wrist; not layering, directly over the extrait, because that would feel mildly sacrilegious. Just for added vanillic savour. Only then do I get real hints of the ultimate L’Heure Bleue moments of my life that I still yearn for and remember.
A dreamy post. Thank you. It has taken me years to come to terms with the fact that perfume is fleeting. It never stays the same – reformulation, age and one’s own sense of smell altering with maturity or illness all conspire to make it such an ephemeral love. And discontinuation is the permanent change. Now I have to be content with the memory of certain fragrances. But nothing lasts forever and I get such pleasure in remembering perfumes when I read descriptions like yours which bring them back to life so vividly in my mind’s nose.
And yet I find the current version to be not too bad, you know. Next time you are in a department store give it a try.It is definitely still the heart of L’Heure Bleue. I would buy it if I had spare cash because the new formulation isn’t a total desecration, as they so often can be. This scent CAN be fleeting, I agree – and this extrait is certainly not what I was expecting – something really rich. But L’Heure Bleue can also be suffocating at high dosage I find. Not everyone can handle all that powder. On themselves or on other people.
A truly one of a kind scent!
But it’s a lovely powder, unlike a lot of “powdery” scents! I have noticed a trend in positive comments that recent reformulations are rather good. I wonder if this means some manufacturers have realised that we are tired of being ripped off with the pale imitations of the classics that they have been churning out?
Topnotch! Reading about a perfume that you yearn, yearn, yearn for and after all sillages down into a delicate disappointment …
Dear Narcissus, it is indeed April and here you come striding , no marching in with trumpets and all like a veritable Lion. MarvelOUS!
But I should have been warned. The Queen zaliger(Dutch for residing with the saints) and I don’t see eye to eye concerning apparel and accessories ! Although I respect her as a very plucky diminutive Royal Ruler -Mirren and Staunton,(my favourite) get her down to a not-teetering T- I am not into Windsor. It all ended for me with the War of the Roses. One exception: Elizabeth Rex the First. What should she have been wearing? Definitely strong, loud and icily regal!
Please keep showering, no veritably regaling, us with savoury comments.
Love it.
The queen’s attire wasn’t my entire cup of tea either but the blow is softened by the lovely L’Heure Bleue.
At least she probably chose a lot of the clothes herself, unlike the J-Royals who wear the dowdiest clunk chosen for them by the imperial household.
You wear this perfume, no ? I simply can’t pull it off. I hope you can !
Nearing my 79th year on tMay 22 I tend to avoid piwdery perfumes, in dread of smelling too dowagerly.
My choices in Guerlain are Chamade, Chant d’Aromes, Champs Elysees, Champagne ( shower gel, alas out of sale), Magora, Nahema.
And on your recommendation: Acqua Allegoria Pamplelune.
Do you have any more suggestions for me?
I just learned that Champagne was by YSL!
Give my love to Clotilda the Queen of all piranhas and tell her I want her in my dreams to chase away horrible female beings, who sometimes haunt me in nightmares, to my chagrin. I think that she will be up to the task!
Oh she is.
LOVE Champagne !
I love L,heure Bleue!
I can imagine you smelling heavenly in it !
Heartbreaking, those beautiful bottles, and the scent of l’Heure Bleue (which I was faithful to, exclusively, for much of my mid-twenties/early thirties). And especially, that watercolour image of the advertisement. To think there was a time when something so fragile, poetic, emotional, ethereal, could be an image to represent a fragrance, when so much of anything commercial today is sold so crudely. Just catching up and so good to do so, Neil my dear.
You are right. All of the original L’Heure Bleueness was (is?) beautiful all round. What a beaut to have chosen as your signature for that period. I wonder how you feel now when you smell it?
A little blue, lol. A melancholy composition to begin with, the decades have added their layers of saudade. The current formulation doesn’t move me emotionally, which in a way makes it more wearable, cheerier. The nostalgia I get from the vintage extrait is almost painful.
I can imagine. But I can’t imagine that THIS extrait would send you, somehow. Where are the clouds beneath?
0.5oz15mL extrait L’Heure Bleue de Guerlain, possibly from the 1940s in a Baccarat Flacon. 3/4th full. (more 4/5th, as I can see …)
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vtg-guerlain-heure-bleue-parfum-4750026918
‘The Vintage Guerlain L’Heure Bleue Baccarat 1oz Corded Bottle is a rare and collectible perfume bottle from France. ‘ (full and older than the above mentioned) (see it at the label.)
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-guerlainheure-bleue-4895771635
worthpoint.com
Flacon Extrait L’Heure Bleue 5′ tall (15cm) w box
rather old (1930-40s) (content 3′ tall [9 cm] ), full
Baccarat flacon with chord, not exactly sealed.
fluide very dark.
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-guerlain-heure-bleue-baccarat-4694028152
but then we still have the no-send politics and perhaps
there are exceptions. it shall however not be GIVEN away.
now I’ll leave it at that.