L'Heure Blanche

I disagree with fellow fragranticans who suggest Guerlain underperformed. guerlain came out with something so extraordinary bold and beautiful, in line with time and trend . This what Narcisso Essence For Her never became for me - a transparent light yet potent and long silage musk. LB is a highly professional and cosy scent at the same time. This is for me a very wearable in any occasion musk, without indolic notes but so sexy at the same time.This is Guerlain’s take on the clean and clear trend and I love it.The issue to envy. I agree it’s very pricey though - in the downside of the story🙈 But still , the quality of the scent and experience is extraordinary, like with most Guerlain creations. I find it very - actually very very similar to Armani Prive Fil Rouge That has been a limited edition, where personally for me GLB is better I. Terms of it’s lasting power (way beyond 6-7 hours and more on the shirt) and silage - this is a noticeable compliments getter. The issue I had with APFR or NREssence that those are/ were too close to the skin and way too shy. Guerlain surpassed those issues and found a perfect balance,IMHO, between cosy and elegant, shy and noticeable.

L’Heure Blanche - This fragrance lives up to its imagery. On application, it gives the feeling of a crisp, cool white light - fresh, aquatic, slightly metallic. It quickly becomes fuller and creamy, lactonic, then clean musk. It’s light and airy but still potent - my husband called to me from the other room to comment how good I smelled. L’Heure Blanche then starts wafting hot and hazy, as it warms on the skin. Imagine a solar light so warm and bright that you’ve gotten lost, along with all sense of time in it, and your skin is now smelling slightly toasty from its warmth. I can still smell it as strong on my chest as I did 9 hours ago. L'Heure Blanche would be beautiful with a button up white shirt, either with a suit or jeans, and would work well for a man’s chemistry as well as a woman. Well done, Mrs. Jelk.

As a Guerlain lover I expected more from L’Heure Blanche, considering that it’s been marketed as a limited edition. My wonderful Sales Assistant friend at the Guerlain boutique in Hong Kong recently sent me some decants including the highly anticipated L’Heure Blanche. I received the pack today and this was the first one I tried. I don’t know what I was expecting, well maybe I do. The initial hype suggested something milky and innocent, something exceedingly delicate and I assumed, included white musk. It’s delicate to the point of blink and you’ll miss it. I am not into ozonic notes, and this one certainly has that watery element which gives it a soapy freshness. Don’t get me wrong, this is not awful, it’s just ordinary and in no way reminiscent of the jewel which is L’Heure Bleue. It reminds me of Nivea cream.

I recently got the chance to try this at a Guerlain event at the San Francisco Neiman Marcus. I felt let down, then annoyed. I have nothing against Claudine Drai or her work, but what Guerlain has done here is used Drai's bourgeois celebrity along with the prestige of one of its oldest and loveliest works, L'Heure bleue, to market an utterly mediocre fragrance in a pretty bottle. L'Heure blanche starts off as a somewhat indolic aquatic musk with a puff of powdery iris. It's interesting but completely unimaginative. Within minutes, it dries down to an aquatic amber that smells like cheap masculine body wash. This may be limited edition, but don't let that fool you. This is a money grab unworthy of the Guerlain name, and certainly not worth the $700+ pricetag.

This is an ambery, musky, persistent scent and, with those descriptors, it does align with some of Guerlain's aesthetic. Beyond those general descriptors, though, it is missing some other common features of typical Guerlain scents like aromatics, a little more of a sense of the animal, slightly more vanilla, etc. It is definitely not a bad scent. On paper it falls somewhat flat and the watery topnote (that luckily does not smell like the bilge-water note of Calone) lingers. On skin, it is not quite as dissonant, and melds well into a fresh, ambery thing. In the drydown, I feel I can make out sweet and tart orange blossom amidst the creamy white muskiness. It is not a smell-alike to Escada Magnetism for Men, but it does scratch that same itch. Of course both are pretty hard to come by and pricey. Another late 90's-early 2000's fresh-ambery-spicy could probably substitute. The Guerlain discreet, fairly long-lasting, quiet, and pleasant--could even be a fine easy reach scent if it weren't prohibitively exclusive and expensive. Other scents like Infusion d'Iris and company already cover the genre quite well enough on their own.