L’Heure Bleue by Guerlain, a legend in perfumery
Likewise, when summer comes, it is when the flowers give off their best scent. This is precisely what inspired the Guerlain house, in 1912, when the brand created one of its most legendary fragrances called L’Heure Bleue.
The poetic aspect of L’Heure Bleue
No description is more appropriate for L’Heure Bleue than the one Jacques Guerlain had made of it: “The sun has set, but night has not yet fallen. The sky has just lost the sun but has not yet found the stars. It is the suspended hour, the hour when all is silent, the hour when man finally finds himself in harmony with the world and the light. In this deep blue light, everything, the quivering foliage, the lapping water, are concentrated in order to express love, friendship, infinite tenderness. L’Heure Bleue is the scent of happiness lost because elusive, it is the scent of happiness glimpsed. To be more precise, the story goes that Jacques Guerlain found inspiration one summer evening, in 1911. It was stopped on the Pont-Neuf after a day’s work to admire the Seine. At that moment, something resounded in him, like an obviousness. From then on, he took it into his head to interpret in an olfactory way the sensations which challenged him that evening. He worked hard for over a year to transcribe this fleeting moment and freeze it for an eternity. What’s more, L’Heure Bleue also has a historical facet. Indeed, it was one of the last juices created by the Guerlain house just before the war. In this sense, it embodies a peaceful break before the storm. He worked hard for over a year to transcribe this fleeting moment and freeze it for an eternity. What’s more, L’Heure Bleue also has a historical facet. Indeed, it was one of the last juices created by the Guerlain house just before the war. In this sense, it embodies a peaceful break before the storm. He worked hard for over a year to transcribe this fleeting moment and freeze it for an eternity. What’s more, L’Heure Bleue also has a historical facet. Indeed, it was one of the last juices created by the Guerlain house just before the war. In this sense, it embodies a peaceful break before the storm.
Guerlain’s signature floral sweetness
Obviously, it was impossible for Jacques Guerlain to evoke L’Heure Bleue without integrating the scent of flowers into its composition. In general, L’Heure Bleue is a very sweet juice composed of floral tones as tender as velvet. The latter are refreshed by a fresh burst of bergamot and anise. The flowers contained in this scent, meanwhile, are dominated by sunny neroli, opulent jasmine, romantic rose, narcotic tuberose and spicier carnation. Finally, L’Heure Bleue rests on a more languid base. This contains bitter almond seeds associated with heliotrope flowers. The iris also reinforces the powdery aspect of this fragrance while the vanilla gives it a suave and warm aspect. Furthermore, L’Heure Bleue is also a very famous perfume for its bottle. This one is the ancestor of the current Little Black Dress. Square in shape, it has shoulders winding in volutes, like two commas to suspend time. Likewise, it is topped with Guerlain’s iconic inverted heart-shaped cap. Here, everything is designed in a sunny yellow tone. Finally, the set is decorated with a silk cord connecting the stopper to the bottle with a gold seal faithful to the Guerlain tradition. everything is designed in a sunny yellow tone. Finally, the set is decorated with a silk cord connecting the stopper to the bottle with a gold seal faithful to the Guerlain tradition. everything is designed in a sunny yellow tone. Finally, the set is decorated with a silk cord connecting the stopper to the bottle with a gold seal faithful to the Guerlain tradition.
Of course there was Jicky by Aimé Guerlain, then the magnificent After L’Ondée composed by his nephew Jacques Guerlain. And then, in 1912, L’Heure Bleue was born, still in the hands and nose of Jacques Guerlain. A true perfumed masterpiece, L’Heure Bleue offers, one last time, an impressionist painting in which the most beautiful flowers rub shoulders with a few powdery and woody delicacies .
L’Heure Bleue or the scented painting of Jacques Guerlain
Sublime, magnificent, dazzling with romanticism, so many superlatives that could not qualify this legendary perfume which wanted to transcribe the emotion of a twilight. A natural twilight but also a twilight of life, of the life of the Roaring Twenties which would soon die out in the doldrums of war.
Jacques Guerlain was much more than a simple perfumer, he was an artist who liked to contemplate nature and its most beautiful effects to transcribe them into delicate scents like Après L’Ondée. For L’Heure Bleue, he was inspired by that hour when the sun falls asleep and the night tries to monopolize the world, this hour when the world is blue, when time seems to hang on the lips of the majestic moon. Some would have made it into a poem or a song, Jacques Guerlain wrote the perfumed verses of his magnificent composition L’Heure Bleue because he said: “I am incapable of expressing my confusion, my emotion, only this perfume is worthy of it. “
However the poet perfumer affirmed, some time later, that he was also inspired by the intimate conviction that this suspended time of happiness would be no more, that peace would no longer be. & Nbsp; Unfortunately this conviction turned out to be correct because the war struck only two years later and forever changed the face of the world, but also the gaze, now mutilated, of the perfumer-poet.
Thus, we esteemed subsequently that the Blue Hour had marked the beginning of the war imbued with the nostalgia for a lost peace and that the conqueror Mitsouko of 1919 would be the eponymous perfume of a new world which awakens after the din.
L’Heure Bleue and the first gourmet scents of Guerlain
In addition to the capital importance of its poetic scope, L’Heure Bleue was composed as a tribute to Mother Nature by offering it sublime flowers but also around totally innovative notes which, today, could evoke modern gourmet chords.
“Jacques Guerlain – a genius! – invented gluttony. First with L’Heure Bleue (this fragrance deliciously smells of marshmallow) and Shalimar, the first oriental nectar built around vanilla. “Sylvaine Delacourte.
Very nuanced, L’Heure Bleue is as delicate and contained as it is divinely flamboyant. Fresh and invigorating, the bergamot and aromatic accords quickly echo a burning base of delicacies and musky and vanilla sensualities. Yet quickly the beauties of flowers invade our nostrils with their intoxicating scents. Roses, violets but also radiant orange blossoms, call out to us with their opulence. A few notes of iris and tuberose will turn into powdery delicacies the better to bewitch us in a powerful Guerlinade based on vanilla and sandalwood that we will never be able to leave…
“ A great perfume was born… “L’Heure Bleue”, the hour when everything is suspended, between reason and passion, a perfume that stops time… Some translate telluric emotions with words, others with words. notes; Jacques Guerlain had the gift of doing it with scent accords… ”
Floral Powdery