Launched in 1993 under the designer’s name before becoming Classique, Jean Paul Gaultier’s first fragrance is signed by Jacques Cavallier. The house classifies it as an amber floral: ginger at the top, orange blossom for the heart, vanilla in the base, over an evocation of rice powder. Its bottle, a glass bust laced into a corset, made its legend.
Jean Paul Gaultier classifies Classique as an amber floral and reduces it to three notes: ginger at the top, orange blossom for the heart, vanilla in the base. The house adds a scent of rice powder, a nostalgic evocation that the vanilla comes to shake up.
In 2007, Robin cited a longer list for this musky floral oriental: bergamot, orange blossom, rose, mandarin, aniseed, carnation, orchid, iris, ylang-ylang, ginger, vanilla, wood, amber and musk. She found the Eau de Parfum heavier and warmer, its notes rearranged enough to smell like something else entirely.
In the original Eau de Toilette, Elena Vosnaki detects an opening of mandarin, peach, plum and cassis, made sparkling by an aldehyde, decanal. Benzyl acetate, somewhere between jasmine and pear drops, stands in, in her view, for the nail polish on the vanity table.
The heart she describes is rosy, made of cinnamic roses and damascones, thickened with orange blossom and ylang-ylang; ginger and lily add only a hint of spice. The very powdery base sets woody-amber Ambrox against vanillin, with a little iris and a musky, earthy, almost animalic trace.
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From the same line
More perfumes from Jean Paul Gaultier
Also composed by Jacques Cavallier
- Contre MoiLouis Vuitton
- Midnight PoisonChristian Dior
- SymphonyLouis Vuitton
- PoêmeLancôme