Vanille Planifolia Extrait 21 Guerlain 2023

An excerpt from my blog post...if you want to understand the meaning of the title, you need to check out my blog post. ;-)

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Long story short… I am a proud owner of Vanille Planifolia 21.
So how does the scent smell?! Like a lot of money spent… and spicy candlelight!

I find the scent hard to describe… (partly because I haven’t spoken German much in years… let alone written it ;-))
This is not my typical favorite vanilla… meaning a spicy-woody, rum-soaked vanilla pod.
When I smell Vanille Planifolia, my impressions are more visual and tactile. Golden candlelight, a load of spices, a thick flow of vanilla cream, a golden velvet shawl… The scent is simply linear yet multifaceted. Sometimes I perceive it as smoky and spicy… but mostly soft, creamy, balsamic, buttery, and vanilla-sweet… without drowning me in its sweetness.
I also think I can detect something powdery and waxy. The image of the candle comes to mind. I think of Diptyque’s Vanille candle. I love that candle. It is very spicy yet also creamy-soft. Very enveloping and calming… like this extrait. The sillage of the perfume is by no means expansive. The scent lingers very close to the skin. For hours on end. Just like an extrait.

When I wear Vanille Planifolia, I feel protected… sheltered from this sometimes so terrible world. Like a delicate veil yet also a thick velvet shawl surrounds me with the perfume. Wrapped up, even embraced by a tamed vanilla orchid with long vines, I feel. But never suffocated. The scent also has the decency to retreat… only to suddenly appear like an opera diva with thunder and crash out of nowhere. Fiery and wild, warmed by my skin, it sometimes awakens me at night. And it has nothing innocent, linear, or even simple about it. And that’s exactly what I love about this scent. Its apparent simplicity during the day and its deeper complexity later at night. Then it resembles the vanilla scents that I love. Mona di Orio’s Vanilla and the earlier version of Guerlain’s Spiritueuse Double Vanille when it was still dark, rich, spicy, and slightly sultry.

Thus, it becomes the scent that transports me to higher realms or dreamlike domains… just as perfume means fantasy and imaginary journeys to me. A rich inner world full of discoveries, adventures, and pleasures. And when the dream ends, a light trace of scraped vanilla pod remains in my hair… and I find myself lost in reverie… wanting to continue dreaming.
And so I cope a little better with the high sums I had to spend on it…