More Guerlains
Samsara, Nahema and L'Instant
I went back to revisit a few of the Guerlain EdPs I had missed in my last pass, and which I had left aside because they seemed oddly below par. The news is not great.
Samsara , which I never liked much and hadn’t smelled for over a decade, is simply unrecognizable. No idea what happened. Nahema is still good, but skeletal. L’Instant is a shadow of its former self.
Interesting how Jacques Guerlain’s work seems to largely have survived somewhat scathed, but Jean Paul’s catalog alternates between lacking finer nuances and losing the plot entirely. Wonder if this signifies lesser effort having been put into their respective reformulations, or if it really is the best they could do in all circumstances.
My father sometimes uses Habit Rouge as an air freshener in the bathroom. This alternately horrifies or amuses me. Given what Guerlain is doing these days, why not treat it as a functional perfumery?