One of the best fragrances ever created, one of my beloved fragrances of all time. L'Heure Bleue is very strange .. both in habits and formula. It's not an easy to smell on the blotter and maybe you will not like it. But when a woman wears L'Heure Bleue - that's a presence in a room. Unforgettable. It has a rare quality, called sillage or trail. Today I felt a deep need to resmell it so I remade the formula I had. Inside you have a lot of aromatics, quite unusual today in floral oriental perfumes, but used a lot in the past by Guerlain or Coty like thyme or lavender, a typical Guerlain leathery note with castoreum and honey notes with civet and miel blanc. I compared this perfume with Candide Effluve and found some similar notes. The lilac aspect exists in L'Heure Bleue, also ylang. Was Candide Effluve developed from HB with the lilac pushed to extremes? I have no idea. L'Heure Bleue is mainly orange flower-violet/orris-spicy (carnation) with a lot of sweet notes. There is also aldehyde C12 and notes that make the perfume a great creation. Like most of Guerlain perfumes the formula is not long. It is said that Origan by Coty inspired L'Heure Bleue but there are also other creations before that which were worked in the same spirit (Apres l'Ondee, Coeur de Jeanette). Compared to Origan (Coty) (which has tarragon plus the bases Iralia, Dianthine, Flonol and heliotropine) l'Heure Bleue is richer and with more shades. The vanillin inside is a special one (the old process) with smokier-woody notes. The smoky note is also typical Guerlain. You can find it (with birch tar) in the original Mitsouko/Shalimar extrait or in the old Djedi.
As in all short formulas everything is about the quality of the ingredients that will give the special "cachet" of the perfume. Put here all the natural infusions (including musk) and you will have a quality difficult to reproduce today.
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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art
