Habit Rouge Guerlain 1965 Eau de Cologne

A newspaper advertisement for Habit Rouge from 1968 shows a male head, whose nose hovers over a bottle of Shalimar, with the line: "To all the secret followers of Guerlain perfumes, you can come out in the open with Habit Rouge for men." This was a year before the Stonewall Riot, the signal of the "Gay Rights Movement" in the USA.

Guerlain has always seen itself as a house for women's fragrances, just as Geo. F. Trumper dedicated itself solely to the grooming needs of gentlemen. Habit Rouge was the highly controversial attempt by the then 28-year-old Jean Paul Guerlain to sell a floral vanilla scent based on the classic Guerlinade to men. The trick was a very characteristic, masculine citrus-leather axis that balanced the feminine aspects, Yin and Yang.

As the advertisement suggested, men also liked the complex orientalism of a vanilla enriched with bergamot, rose, jasmine, tonka, iris root, balsamic resins, civet, and castoreum, and not just on women. Floral notes like violet and rose were not gendered in the 19th century; classics like Knize Ten or Varón Dandy from the twenties contained powdery-floral accords of rose, iris, clove, and vanilla or tonka, and Old Spice famously began its career in 1936 as a spicy-oriental women's fragrance. But undoubtedly, the dosage in Habit Rouge was bolder, so much so that Guerlain had to insist that his uncle Jacques release a toned-down "Dry" version in 1967. Habit Rouge slowly but ultimately made a strong mark in the market - a sign and perhaps even a modest engine of the value shift of this era - and although it would take years until the decade of unisex fragrances and metrosexuality, it represents a perfumery milestone, both in terms of the gender-specific shift in the fragrance spectrum and the fundamental de-gendering of perfumes. From Le Male to Dior Homme, many classics of the last decades would be unthinkable without Habit Rouge.

This Eau de Cologne is also a milestone and masterpiece in perfumery aesthetics, a classic of French style, where a highly complex combination of many materials culminates in absolutely seamless elegance. It is difficult to identify individual notes - and one does not want to; rather, one enjoys the beauty of this pointillistic olfactory artwork, whose meticulously arranged details create such a harmonious whole. Guerlain fused the lightness and freshness of a classic Eau de Cologne with the texture of an oriental (Aimée Guerlain, the creator of Jicky, must have nodded encouragingly from the beyond) and masculine leather, and where one ends and the other begins is indeterminate. Powdery orange is played around by rose, but this orange is already shaped by leather, and the rose is nestled in powdery iris root, which also corresponds with the leather, which in turn is co-composed by the resins - one leads to another like in a Celtic knot pattern, and the impressions of lightness and freshness as well as density, bitter spice, and sweetness interlock seamlessly.

Layers of olfactory complexity lie behind the elegant simplicity of this Eau de Cologne (whose concentration, however, surpassed most of today's EdTs) just as the cultural-historical sediments lie behind the striking name. Habit Rouge refers to the red coat of fox hunting and to the Anglomania of French fashion in the 18th century, when the "redingote" (riding coat) became the avant-garde dress of style-conscious (and politically Anglophile) Parisians, thus also reflecting England's influence on cosmetics and perfumery well into the 19th century, when the first Guerlain, Pierre-Francois-Pascal, studied the craft of soap making there. The riding whip used in some campaigns and designs is an unambiguous/ambiguous allusion. Which fox is being hunted here? Who is chastising and riding whom? The scent the wearer, the wearer the scent, the scent of the wearer the object of his desire? Who is "male," who is "female"? N'importe, as long as everyone has their pleasure and it smells good.

Habit Rouge is a great and deep fragrance with a great and deep history. A marvel of Jean Paul Guerlain, the greatest men's fragrance of the house and furthermore one of the most beautiful scents a man can exude. The countless editions and variations testify to its relevance, but the fact that the original Eau de Cologne is no longer available is sad. For once inhaled, one never forgets this unique scent, one wants to enjoy it again and intuitively understands the meaning of perfumery as a place of creative expression, as an expression of deepest beauty, as a valued eighth art.