L’Heure Bleue is the eau de parfum that Jacques Guerlain composed in 1912 for Guerlain, a floral amber that the house now sells under the name L’Heure Bleue 1912, in the Les Légendaires collection. Anise and bergamot in the top notes, carnation and neroli in the heart, iris, violet, vanilla, benzoin and tonka bean in the base; inverted heart bottle, 75 ml.
Frolova (Bois de Jasmin) sees in it the embodiment of refinement, five stars despite a base weighed down by vanilla; Feydeau and Delacourte, longtime wearers, praise its softness.
Olfastory’s review
Bois de Jasmin: the embodiment of refinement
Victoria Frolova gives five stars to L’Heure Bleue, which she considers the embodiment of refinement: a luminous orange blossom against the softness of vanilla, iris and incense, a sillage among the most beautiful of the great classics, radiant, glowing, enveloping. Anise, she says, runs as a leitmotif from beginning to end.
On the 2010 reformulation, she is more reserved: the amount of vanilla and coumarin, without a strong animalic note, unbalances the base; the heavy powder and the anise spark are missing, the fragrance has lost some of its character. She still prefers this version to none at all, and gladly wears the 2012 one.
Élisabeth de Feydeau: a tender and sensual paradox
The historian, who has worn it for years, calls it one of the most beautiful olfactory architectures in history, at once tender and sensual, delicate and intense, secret and flamboyant. She acknowledges that it has changed under regulation and expresses a wish: to recover the animalic musk tinctures that once made it cling to skin.
Sylvaine Delacourte: Jacques Guerlain's marshmallow
The former director of creation at Guerlain has never left L’Heure Bleue since she dared to wear it. She detects in it a delicious marshmallow, the birth of the gourmand character before Shalimar, a fragrance of softness and nostalgia that she wears in the evening to find herself again, and judges Oscar de la Renta a pale copy.