Mitsouko Extract

Luca Turin is the guy who got me into Mitsouko, so for all his dismissive, acrid prose of things he does not enjoy (a couple of which I love), I thank him for putting a name to a Proustian childhood memory that in adulthood, isn’t simply a recalling of something comforting (like 4711 cologne) but really has taken on new hues of appreciation as my experience of perfume grows. My first sampling of Mitsouko was at a Guerlain concession in a department store in Singapore where ai live. By and by all guerlain concessions here do not even carry Mitsouko in any concentration, which is baffling. But along one wall of a sort of display vanity counter compete with parlour chairs, quite separate from the main ‘salable’ merchandise, there was a row of squarish testers or extrait quality, very unassuming-looking. I reached out for it and the shop lady (who prior to this had told me they did not carry Mitsouko nor did they have a tester, and who seemed confused when I asked her if Spiriteuse Double Vanille was a linear scent, like seriously how do you work for Guerlain and not know basic perfume terminology) actually hurried up to me and wanted to discourage me from spraying it, saying it had been there a Long time and it may have ‘turned’ and that it was just for display (which is ridiculously akin to a restaurant putting out plastic replicas of food it does not intend to serve). I just smiled and sprayed with abandon, hoping to empty out half the bottle before her desperate eyes (actually just three or four sprays) and smiled and said not to worry, my skin is not that precious. I was at once greeted by a delicious bracing aroma of mulled wine with a symphony of clove,cinnamon and star anise, like Christmas had come early. At first I saw some similarities to Nobile 1942’s Rudis in the tangibility of the fruit. This I understood to be that famous synthetic peach accord much talked about, but to me it isn’t so much about replicating fresh peaches as it is about the condensed, heavier flavour of preserved plum blossom fruits (from the same Prunus genus as peaches) locally known as ‘sng bueh’, particularly the totally desiccated variety that resemble mummified dates. In a way that association is perhaps more allied with Mitsouko as I imagine plum blossoms, with their gnarled trunks so often depicted in Chinese brush paintings in vast swathes of rich black ink In direct opposition to the tiny white flowers which bloom in the depths of winter and symbolise the approach of an as yet unseen or unfelt spring, to be the darker, more resilient Sisters of the gayer pink cherry blossom. So two months on (and many subsequent sprays at the same Guerlain store later), I decided to buckle down and purchase a bottle of Mitsouko, and I looked on eBay to see if I could find some good vintages for decent prices. I finally settled on a 7.5ml ‘parapluie’ bottle in its lovely original box with the Marly horse logo, slightly trepidatious that at approximately half a century old, it really might have ‘turned’, or at least the fresh tangy fruity notes would have entirely gone by now. Well at leas the box is gorgeous and I’m a sucker for packaging... It just arrived and I am astounded to say, the scent is exactly as I remembered it from the shop, with no diminution of the fresh top or heart notes. One hour in and the fruitiness is still blazing ahead with gusto, backed by a wonderful wall of lipstick and spices that really surrounds you like a luxurious little panelled antechamber, plush and soundproof, except for the scintillating ping of that peach note that tinkles like a distant yet bright wind chime at irregular intervals; that to me is the real joy of wearing Mitsouko. The box depicts a sort of chinoiserie interpretation of a coromandel screen done in a gilded Boulle style on burled wood, and that really is the perfect imagery for the scent:a French fantasy of all the visually heavier aspects of Japanese aesthetics so counterpoint to western notions of femininity - the pungent black maki-e lacquerware, the slightly ominous and angular hairdos of the Edo period, the flattened busts and heavy platform geta clogs, and the coromandel screens themselves. It’s that resinous lacquer-like quality that really separates this from any other fruity fragrance and lends it real gravitas while, I assume, preserving those peaches in such perfect form for so many years.

For today I consider myself to be one of the luckiest men on the planet because I get the pleasure of visiting an old friend and one of the most beautiful friends I have ever known, Mitsouko. Not only do I get to visit with her, on my left arm is the extrait and on the right is the EdP. What a truly wonderful day. Now, for the EdP, as with the extrait, I must first say that I believe Guerlain to be making a huge mistake with Mitsouko. Why is this marketed as a women's perfume? How terribly unfair to us fellows out there. I think this makes an excellent masculine fragrance - well, an excellent unisex scent to be fully honest. If Guerlain simply said this, it would give thousands of men permission to try it and I suspect that most of them would fall in love with it. What might hold Guerlain - and many thousands of men - back from this simple yet life-changing perspective is the floral and fruity middle. Up top you have Guerlain's classic shimmering and powdery bergamot. Guerlain uses this all of the time, including in their masculines, so there's point number one. Then you get to the middle, a beautifully evocative and soft expression of jasmine, rose, peach, and ylang-ylang. This part does smell decidedly feminine but to Jacques Guerlain's genius he didn't make it a full-on sugary syrupy flower and fruit bomb; it's subtle, it's gentle, it's a beautiful tissue paper rather than a thick crinkly and loud wrapping paper. For the relaxed, understated and suave gentleman this would work very well. Finally, at the base, are equally tissue-paper like notes of spicy woods, oakmoss, and vetiver - classic masculine accords. So, we have a masculine template top and base, and a more feminine but wearable-by-all middle; two out of three makes this plausibly masculine in my book. But, however, I am and will very much admit that my argument is reductive. The EdP on my right arm is not as good as the extrait on my left arm, but few things have ever existed that are as beautiful as Guerlain's Mitsouko extrait, so I will not make this unfair comparison. They are basically the same, except that the extrait is richer and lasts longer (no surprise). Mitsouko transcends gender, time and place, and everything we currently think perfumes should be (especially in these modern times). This is beige satin porcelain in a bottle, and beige satin porcelain suits all genders and tastes. It is quiet, refined and gentle, yet stunningly beautiful; a very modest but room-lighting smile through the kindest of eyes, like Mona Lisa's if it were put on the most beautiful and legendary of geishas. This is a perfume everyone who likes perfume, or more so than that, should smell at least once in their life. I would like to say everyone should wear it at least once in their life but that might be a bit too much of an infringement on freedoms. Many perfume critics, experts, creative directors, and perfumers consider Mitsouko to be the greatest perfume of all time. I don't know that I could ever develop a sufficient enough argument to say otherwise, nor would I ever feel the need to try.

Oh with shock and sadness I see the reviewer before me saying that vintage bottles purchased smell no good. I'm weighing in because Vintage Mitsouko is my utter holy grail, my lifelong obsession, my perfect perfume. It's so divine that I guess sadly there are fakes. I can even pick the golden brown aura of the colour, and I do know being in the visual arts world that just about anything can be faked. I've bought many bottles of vintage Mitz, maybe I've cornered the market, sorry....I used to wonder sometimes where they all came from😄. Butttttt.... it depends upon what you call vintage and how you hunt for it. My vintage bottles purchased from Japan and Taiwan and even Hong Kong, from only E bay because I'm a rural Australian, are all genuine, up to about five years ago, because I finally decided I had to get a grip....if I have any fakes, they are so damn good that I'd buy them again...[I know they aren't fakes because of five decades of Mitsouko}. What I'm trying to say here is that genuine vintage Mitz has been in my experience bombproof. It doesn't really have top notes of any consequence. I got a bottle of current, about 6-8 yrs ago_ reformulated post-ifra stuff for comparisons sake, and while nice enough it just isn't in the same universe. Have I already explained how I used to tuck empty extract bottles into my undies drawer? Soooo, this really begs the question of why the hell don't they produce vintage Mitsouko any more? Everyone, well a few hundred of us, wants it. It smells heavenly. It's allegedly IFRA the bad guy, but maybe they are really too scared to give us the real stuff instead of 'vetivering' it. Meanwhile Guerlain, part of LVMH, can also just firehose dozens of new addition fumes a month onto the shelves, and produce 'limited edition' fumes with apparently a hundred bottles. I'm ranting because I also love modern trendy 'fumes. I love many of the Maison Diors, the T Fs, the SLS. Adore the cultish Delina and the peach beauties Good Girl Gone Bad, Peche Cardinale, Cassini. LMVH, it's not a contest as to how you can rip $$$ off the consumers. (Actually sadly it is 🤨. ) Some of us want the really beautiful stuff. I want a real peach chypre Mitz, with maybe the tiniest lickable smear of overcooked sweet peach jam playing around the witches house while She has a yeast dough leavening, in a Baba Yaga haunted forest. And a pirate has come home with some overaged ambergris and magic mushrooms that glow. Wait lol I already have it! Actually I have to be real here, there is no peach candy in vintage Mitz. It's a perfect fuzzy ripe peach just plucked from the green leafy tree with pollution averse moss growing on its woody bark. Yet the Amber, the oak moss which I don't find dry and acerbic at all, is so sweet, so carnal and addictive. Obvs.

[800] Mitsouko is, in the truest sense of the word, an icon. The queen of chypres, and one of Guerlain's very best offerings, this century-old perfume is something special. While Coty Chypre predated Mitsouko by two years, pioneering (and eponymising) the chypre scent family, Mitsouko was an improvement on - if not a perfecting of - Coty's efforts and has also greatly outlived it. Quintessentially French in every sense but name, it is a rich, opulent beauty with a delicious oakmoss note in the base. I have a treasured extrait from the 1970s in a rosebud flacon, housed in the harvest box. While my 2012 EDP sample is a reasonably faithful rendering of this classic scent, it pales in comparison to my vintage extrait. Mitsouko opens with bergamot, the definitive start to a classic chypre accord. Orange is also evident, bright and fresh, followed closely by powdery florals. Iris is evident initially, a personal favourite, followed by rose and clean jasmine. Alongside the bergamot and balsamic base that develops slowly in the background, the Guerlinade accord is very much present. The inclusion of the peach note was a masterstroke in the creation of Mitsouko - it lifts and complements the chypre components to perfection, adding sweetness, brightness and softness to the rich, mossy base and dense, powdery florals. It has been copied many times, often extremely well, but Mitsouko is its original story. The balsamic amber accord that permeates this scent becomes more prominent as it dries down, punctuated by the rich oakmoss - truly one of the best notes in vintage perfumery. Warm, rich spices round it out, notably sweet cinnamon, and soft woody notes round out the mossy-amber base. Vetiver is a key player here, dry and grassy. The chypre accord is richly dense yet airy, not as inky-dark as in Givenchy III for example. The amber becomes more leathery as it progresses here - I get a labdanum note. It becomes musky as it fades, with soft spices and woody notes remaining until final fade. Sillage is moderate and longevity is long-lasting. Unisex by modern standards, Mitsouko is utterly timeless - versatile and wearable despite its veneer of vintage glamour. Oft-imitated, it has paved the way for many of my favourites (Estée Lauder Knowing, Jubilation 25 et al.). While the modern version (2012) isn't bad, it doesn't compare to this vintage beauty. I must try the modern extrait for comparison. A top-notch example of the genre, Mitsouko is a true classic. 5/5.

God I love chypres, and Mitsouko is first among them (shh, Coty) - it's one of several examples in perfumery where the art was perfected early on and later additions to the genre have had a hard time matching this (though many other lovely chypres do abound). I suppose if one's interested in the extrait, one ought to have already smelled the EDP and/or EDT, so I'll limit my comments to what makes the pure perfume special in my eyes. Guerlain uses its extraits both to present perfumes with higher total oil concentration (indeed, 2020 Mitsouko extrait leaves oily residue on my skin) and to use higher-quality materials to really give the perfume a classical sensuality. Despite this, extraits aren't always my favourite concentrations - I prefer Shalimar as an EDT, for example. Shalimar, however, is dominated by both affordable naturals (bergamot, mainly) and affordable synthetics (ethyl vanillin) so switching the rose and jasmine out for expensive versions doesn't make much difference. Mitsouko, by contrast, benefits hugely from high-quality, high concentration naturals because apart from its gamma undecalactone (the green, almost pregnant peach note, which is synthetic and therefore identical across concentrations) Mitsouko uses a complex floral bouquet, and both natural oakmoss and labdanum. This buffered complexity really lets it reap in the extrait version. Mitsouko extrait has a delectable floral mid, in which I can pick up an obvious rose which is much more subtle in the lighter concentrations. The extrait is also sweeter, unexpectedly, I'm assuming from an amped-up labdanum. Where the EDP is an image of the unripe peach, the pure perfume is like you've taken an axe to the peach tree, and a peach-scented amber is oozing out of the wound. It's remarkably resinous, and while still on the drier side of perfumery is more sap-like and less granular than the EDP. For people who like Mitsouko's peach, the pure perfume really is the next level and it's one of my all-time favourites from any house. Its one caveat is its longevity, which is not bad per se (around 6 hours) but isn't quite as good as it ought to be at this price. Nevertheless, this is the height of fine perfumery, it honestly doesn't get better than this, and it's WELL worth hunting one (or two!) of these bottles down if you can.