JACQUES

Featured NOTES include:- Italian Lemon, Bergamot, Rose Damascena, Jasmine Grandiflorum, Orris Root, Benzoin, Vietnamese Oudh and hand-tinctured Vanilla beans. (I recently found a sealed flask of my original formula in the juice archives when we moved house).

In 2017, a popular perfume critic and reviewer challenged me to make an all-natural version of Shalimar. No way. I said. Why try and make (again) what is already perfect? Already here and someone else’s idea? Surely every eager-beaver nose has had a crack at blending this and No5, right? Besides, I don’t ‘dupe’. He urged me to give it my best shot, to test my skills and ‘purely for the creative challenge’ he said.

So I began to think deeply, and read about the life and times of the esteemed Monsieur Jacques Guerlain.

How could I attempt to craft anything akin to the remarkable Shalimar using a restricted palette of essential oils, sourced 100 years later? No ethyl vanillin. No Provence roses or jasmine. No civet or nitro musks. How do I conjure leathery scorched creme brulee? I began to sketch some notes…

At some point in my research phase, I imagined that the lights in my studio had somehow dimmed, the walls and floors had darkened. I stared into the gloom of a wood-panelled room, perched upon an old, overstuffed leather chair…. the world was quiet, the air was clean and time ticked by so slowly that it felt heavy as a treacle of moments passing through and around me. Here was a fireplace where one had never been, and gaslights glowed in beautiful wall sconces. A portrait of uncle Aime was ever so slightly askew and the sound of very large dogs barking off in the distance traveled into the room as dusk descended in the garden

My eyes stared into nowhere, I was completely lost in the (re)musing of an idea whose time had come around the circle again.

My humble, home-spun tribute to the man behind the nose.

Ode to a Love Affair