Mitsouko, or the story of an extraordinary and impossible love affair. How should one speak of a perfume as iconic as Mitsouko by Guerlain, born in 1919?
Before the war, the great perfumer Jacques Guerlain had offered L’Heure Bleue and its soft notes depicted in a twilight tableau. Upon returning from that tragic period, Jacques Guerlain chose to close this chapter by offering a perfume for assertive, refined women, Mitsouko. Mitsouko, or the declaration of independence of those women who had taken power without forgetting their beautiful femininity and the scents they once wore.
Mitsouko, or Jacques Guerlain’s perfume of eternity
Jacques Guerlain, who greatly contributed to the house’s renown by creating perfumes such as Shalimar, L’Heure Bleue or Mitsouko, liked to repeat: glory is fleeting, only renown endures.
Mitsouko is certainly one of the greatest olfactory masterpieces of the 20th century, and it is without a doubt one of the bestsellers of the house of Guerlain.
Why?
Perhaps, first and foremost, because Jacques Guerlain was one of those perfumers who knew how to capture the spirit of the times and turn it into brilliant modernities that pleased through the surprise they provoked. For, let there be no mistake, Mitsouko, released in 1919, was something of a small revolution in the very compartmentalized world of perfumery for women at the time. It exhales the chypre scents that his friend François Coty had already explored with Chypre in 1917. But Mitsouko goes even further by adding exotic, spicy scents that carried European women toward the beauties of Asia, which they still knew little about, given how rare travel was at the time. Therein lies the genius of the creator, who bottled his most beautiful travel memories…
After years of soft, floral perfumes, Mitsouko offered women a beautiful escape toward the powers of their femininity, an open door to a sensuality intoxicated with wood and spices, but also with roses and a completely unprecedented fruity note.
Mitsouko’s peach note and Jacques Guerlain’s love of olfactory molecular discoveries
Jacques Guerlain was a bold and inventive perfumer. He was passionate about travel, but also about ever more surprising olfactory discoveries. Molecular research, which developed considerably in the early 20th century, gave this adventurer of scents the opportunity to offer magnificent innovations.
Thus Mitsouko, the beautiful, elegant and feminine chypre, came to be adorned with an absolute peach note unknown until the bottle was unveiled in wisps. Undecalactone, which recreates the peach note in perfumery, was discovered in 1908, yet it was not until Jacques Guerlain and Mitsouko that this sweet, velvety scent finally became known to the public. It should also be noted that Jacques Guerlain innovated again shortly after by offering an unprecedented synthetic vanilla in Shalimar.
Jacques Guerlain thus, as he did so well, brought together the traditional floral and elegant accords of the house of Guerlain with fruity notes never before used. In the end, nearly a century later, Mitsouko remains one of the cult perfumes of the house of Guerlain and of modern perfumery.