If you are the kind of person who loves folklore, history, mythology and perfume all rolled together into a wonderful narrative, than you would respect and admire Ms. Marie Line Patry, National Fragrance & Beauty Director for Guerlain Paris. I was privy to an in depth one-on-one session with Ms. Patry as part of the Guerlain Exclusive Fragrance Experience at Saks Fifth Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts on December 15. The event, which showcased a beautiful traveling trunk filled with Guerlain perfumes and history, was a true multi-dimensional experience of sight, sound and scents. To my delight and because of Ms. Patry’s generosity, I was fortunate to partake in the Guerlain experience on a private tour, and was able to ask many questions about Guerlain’s perfumes and its legendary past.
Ms. Marie Line Patry, National Fragrance & Beauty Director for Guerlain Paris
One’s first impression of the Fragrance Experience is the sheer expansiveness of Guerlain’s repertoire: so many fragrances over such a long and illustrious lifespan, and still producing perfumes each year. As Ms. Patry began by discussing the basic principles of the scent pyramid and musical note references, she would frequently refer to various Guerlain perfumes and take them from the velvet drawers of the trunk for me to sample and to amplify her message.
“Guerlain perfumes dance on your skin,” she says, specifically referring to the vertical character of the perfumes: how they play upward and outward from the skin, as opposed to crawling flat and horizontal. This, she says, is due to the exceptional quality of ingredients that go into making a Guerlain. To offer an example, she presented a bottle of Spiritueuse Double Vanille, which I sampled on my hand and greatly enjoyed. She explained that this kind of vanilla-based perfume could only be made with rare and select dark vanilla beans, which were key to the scent’s signature
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Since we were discussing ingredients, Marie showed me the raw-materials box, which she carries in the trunk for demonstrations. It holds a fascinating collection of items such as tonka beans, angelica root, leather, and rose petals, among many others. This is used to help educate customers about the actual elements that are used to create a perfume. The trunk itself was filled to the brim with perfumes ranging from the most sweet and floral, to the spiciest woody scents. Marie accurately classified me as having “very sweet skin,” with which I agree, because I have been told this previously. She pointed out that spicy and earthy scents were best for me, and she then presented a number of scents for me to try, all of which smelled great on my skin. Understanding people’s skin types and the fragrances that best suit them are key to Marie’s expertise as a perfume teacher and guide. She smiled enthusiastically when I told her that Guerlain’s Vetiver was the one perfume I wore continuously for nearly three years
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If there is one constant thread in any discussion about Guerlain, it is history. Being an avid history enthusiast myself, I listened with great interest to the many stories that Marie has to tell about the perfumes and their inspirations. At one point in our talk, she showed me a beautiful bottle and offered me a sample. I was stunned by this other-worldly perfume, and imagine my surprise to find out that this scent had been designed by Jacques Guerlain in 1933 for none other than American dancer Josephine Baker. “He called her his ‘ange noir’,” says Marie, referring to the famous dancer who inspired Sous le Vent. As the story goes, Jacques was so enamored by Ms. Baker that he had to create a scent that best reflected her
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American dancer
Josephine Baker, 1926-1927
I couldn’t help but feel transported back in time through the story, the wonderful perfume, and the classic 1930’s style typeface on the elegant bottle. This story led to another: the timeless scent Vol de Nuit, inspired by the novel of the same name by French aviator and poet Antoine du Saint-Exupéry. Marie described the scent as reaching out and over the vast blue sky, and as she motioned outward with her hands, the perfume truly came alive. We spoke of other Guerlain classics such as Mitsuko, Jicky, and Shalimar. Marie took this opportunity to introduce me to the more recent approach to a classic (Shalimar Parfum Initial), and I was delighted by the scent; a genuine new imagining of the classic
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Since I’d remembered that Thierry Wasser was at the helm of creating Shalimar Parfum Initial, I asked Marie about Mr. Wasser. “I see him often!,” she says, smiling, and mentioned that besides her constant trips around the globe for Guerlain, she is at the Paris offices at least four times a year. The sense you get from Marie is that Guerlain still maintains a close-knit family among those who work there. She herself works directly with Wasser and many of the important noses at Guerlain, helping to make her a true ambassador for the company and its creations.
Marie reminded me that Guerlain is one of a precious few perfume makers that still keeps its noses in-house. The list of perfume creators at Guerlain is legendary and impressive. As we were talking about all this history, I could not help but make mention of the numerous candy-coated fragrances that have flooded the markets from other perfume houses in recent years, some catering very exclusively to younger crowds, and lacking the depth of Guerlain. But Marie pointed me to a recent addition, La Petite Robe Noire, and I was impressed to smell a delightfully youthful and sparkling gourmand, making the point that even an epic house like Guerlain likes to create perfumes that all wearers can enjoy, even someone very young
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After sampling a host of other perfumes, looking at photographs of the beautiful restored Guerlain Boutique and Museum on the Champs Elysées in Paris, and talking animatedly with Ms. Patry, I felt that I had indeed received a truly first-class tour of this house’s amazing creations. It would take far more than a day to sample every perfume that Guerlain has created: consider hundreds of fragrances spanning close to 200 years of activity. But, if you can’t travel to Paris, the Fragrance Experience gives you a tantalizing taste of what it is like to be there in the original shop, surrounded by some of the greatest perfumes ever made.
I would like to thank Marie Line Patry for her presentation, and Saks-Guerlain specialists Lou Mastromattei and Margaret Sumney for their attention and assistance with the Fragrance Experience
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We remind you that the last day of the event is tomorrow, Saturday, Dec 17 at Neiman Marcus King of Prussia (Pennsylvania) Contact: 610-962-6200 ext 241
