L'Heure Bleue Guerlain Eau de Parfum

A masterpiece. I really looked for other words, but couldn't find anything more fitting. Basically, L'Heure Bleue is the perfect fragrance. Harmonious, round, deep, multi-faceted, highly individual, distinctive, exquisite, weightless and yet heavy, soft and strong at the same time. It is simply Guerlain. Learned is learned. A guarantee for guarantee. Especially the classics. I first came into contact with this fragrance about 18 years ago. And I can still remember the situation almost exactly. It was the time when I began to discover my enthusiasm for Guerlain. All those stories. To almost every single perfume an own inspiration. So much tradition and history to discover. Mine, precisely. So of course I was especially interested in the old perfumes. From the hands of the greatest masters. And logically, there's no getting around L'Heure Bleue. I wanted to find "my" Guerlain fragrance and described it to the expert as it should be. What's important to me and what I like. Heavy, tending to be dark, full, with a touch of oriental, deep, long-lasting... She didn't have to think long and reached for a bottle. "This is it. Her scent". She was right. One breath was enough. I felt something velvety falling heavily upon me. It enveloped me. At that time I was still worried about how women's and men's fragrances were. Oh dear. This is a woman's perfume. There's no doubt about it. What am I doing? But it's mine. Fortunately, the desire was stronger and I adopted it despite some reservations about whether I "may" wear it as a man. Of course I can. Because now I know that you can't define a gender by a scent. There are still some notes that I would tend to assign more to women or men, but that doesn't mean that they can't both wear it. Basically, our perception today is probably mainly the result of marketing, and we have learned and accepted it that way. In its origin, however, fragrances were not really assigned to gender. Another example are real Arabic, oriental fragrances, i.e. those that can be bought on the net or directly in Arabic countries. There are many fragrances that are meant for men, completely untypical of what is sold to us here in the West as a male fragrance. But anyway - everyone has to decide for himself anyway. In the end it always depends on the individual wearer and the respective fragrance. And it's exciting when, for example, a very feminine woman wears a tart scent and a distinctive man wears a perfume with a certain sweetness or floral quality. It simply has to fit. And then the supposedly unsuitable scent even underlines the man's masculinity or the woman's femininity. Now back to L'Heure Bleue. Here it was just like this. Of course, the scent is anything but what we understand by a men's scent in our country. But I immediately recognized the potential, the complexity of this composition. I knew that this fragrance had a development, that it would bring out very different facets, and above all that it would connect with its wearer. This fragrance is a real signature. And that's why it also underlines a masculine personality. By the way, I feel this way with most of the older, great classic fragrances. Everyone now knows what the inspiration for this fragrance was, which was created in 1912. The hour when the sun has set, but night has not yet fallen. And yes. One might think that L'Heure Bleue perfectly captures this magical moment of the day. But of course it is an imagination, as inspiration is. A beautiful one, admittedly. But L'Heure Bleue is much more than that, because every wearer can of course give this fragrance their own interpretation. So I associate with this fragrance, apart from its magical aura, its heavy softness, its enveloping nature, a very special darkness, a certain melancholy and lascivious, intoxicating sensuality. But all this always with style and class. French. And despite the partly powdery softness of the fragrance, for me it also possesses great strength and angularity. It is complex and multi-layered. Above all, you have to learn this fragrance, get familiar with it. The more you deal with it, give it time and space, the more you will discover. It's worth it.