Jicky: A perfume created for a woman, worn by men and then by women! Jicky, created in 1889, is considered by every perfumery specialist as THE first abstract perfume.
Pierre-François-Pascal Guerlain founded the house of Guerlain in 1828, and it was in 1853, with his Eau de Cologne Impériale created for Empress Eugénie, that he became one of the greatest perfumers in Europe. Yet despite this dazzling success, it was especially thanks to Aimé Guerlain and Jicky that the house gained its international aura, offering for the first time in the 19th century a unisex perfume, and above all, a perfume as art...
Jicky, or the birth of a new perfumery, the perfumery of the heart
Before Jicky, perfume was expected to reproduce natural scents, floral scents, citrus scents, but above all scents that exuded the beauty of Nature. Perfumes, often Eaux de Cologne, were therefore fresh and relatively fleeting. But Aimé Guerlain and Jicky would upend this established order.
Indeed, for the first time in perfumery, Aimé Guerlain wanted to go far beyond depicting flowers; he would tell his story of disappointed love with a young English lady. A young lady who, though very feminine, had temperament and a personality as feminine as it was stormy. Jicky would be the olfactory testament of this story, of this fallen flight of a perfumer who was young and already so bold, so talented...
Thus Jicky was built entirely on contrasts and refined accords, thanks in particular to the very first use of animalic scents as well as synthetic scents. Aimé Guerlain dared to use the best of science and technology to marry it to the beauty of the wildest, most abrupt accords, while having them embrace delicate and subtle flowers. Jicky would be the first perfume ever conceived as a scented work of art, where opposites clash, attract, and sometimes even devour one another, to sketch, better than a flower, a woman...
Revolutionary and bold, this olfactory ode is so because it is the first not to imitate nature (the first abstract perfume). It is also so through its ambivalence: it appears clear, yet it is deep; it appears luminous, yet it is sensual. Sylvaine Delacourte, Esprit de Parfum, on Jicky by Guerlain.
The refinement of contrasts, the ode to opposites, Jicky by Aimé Guerlain is the father of all Guerlain perfumes of the 20th century
Jicky's magnificent contrasts, as well as its multifaceted and refined personality, would make it one of the very first perfumes considered modern. A modernity that would later assert itself in many other perfumes, including of course the famous N°5 by Chanel, or the magnificent Shalimar, which would be composed by his successor Jacques Guerlain.
Thus Jicky could be presented through three faces at once different, opposed, yet ultimately highly complementary. It opens first on fresh, powerful, almost virile aromatic notes of lavender, rosemary and bergamot. Then, at the heart, Jicky finally reveals the traits of a wholly feminine delicacy through accords of rose and jasmine. Finally, Jicky lifts the veil on its animalic power, its impetuous character, letting itself be carried away into absolute, synthetic modernities of vanillin and coumarin (derived from tonka bean), all the better to become intoxicated by a raw and wild civet.
Jicky, the perfume laughs at the passing of time... original advertising slogan by Guerlain for Jicky.