Category Archives: Journal

Guerlain L’Heure Bleue Parfum (Vtg)

This almond pastry perfume from the early 20th Century by the legendary Jacques Guerlain is the carnation fragrance. If you find carnations dowdy and dull wear enough L’Heure Bleue in vintage form and you’ll become besotted.

Actually, I used up a spray bottle of 2010’s L’Heure Bleue in less than 10 years and thankfully that formulation is also nothing to shake a stick at.

I finished this 2014 bottle by 2021. For me that’s unusual.

Once I read a theory on a Fragrantica chat that Zelda Fitzgerald likely wore L’Heure Bleue and while that theory could easily be accurate the theory was based on the assumption of her supposed general snobbery. To my nose L’Heure Bleue is elegant and old-world opulent like Mitsouko…but it’s also warm and gooey and toasty and buttery and delicious. It’s not a cold, prim fragrance at heart. It’s a bit melancholy and pensive possibly but not snobby. Exclusive maybe… But it’s a warm, sensitive olfactory beauty.

I need to buy more. Given my tastes I can’t own too much LHeure Bleue.

Bulls Blood

Notes: Patchouli, rose, costus root, tobacco, and black musk.

I love this smokey, leathery, dirty patchouli. If you smell it closely enough it’s a particularly dirty and unexpected patchouli, rose, musk and tobacco accord. It’s not a mystery. It’s just unconventional. But if you don’t analyze it carefully it smells like blood. And an animal farm. Horses. Mud.

*laugh*

As someone who also loves nature I find this fragrance endearing, homey, comforting and beautiful. It’s most bloody at the start but into the drydown it’s primarily a warm, animalic, actually very opulent and even pretty fragrance. It just takes the right skin chemistry and attitude to wear it.

Longevity and sillage are moderate, but be warned that it is meant to smell like “bull’s blood”…