Guerlain
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Black pepper and pink pepper ignite immediately, their sharp bite cutting through grapefruit's citric brightness and pear's delicate sweetness. You're hit with something simultaneously spicy and fruity—like biting into a pepper whilst juice drips down your chin, an uncomfortable but oddly magnetic sensation.
The pepper recedes just enough for myrrh to emerge as the fragrance's true heart, warm and resinous, whilst iris adds a subtle powdery haze. The apricot becomes increasingly apparent, creating an intriguing sweetness that never tips into gourmand territory, kept in check by the frankincense that's already beginning to ascend.
Frankincense and patchouli dominate, grounded by liquorice's anise-like whisper, creating a dry, woody, faintly sweet skin scent that feels almost like having burned incense hours earlier and still catching its ghost on clothing.
Myrrhe & Délires is a fragrance that treats spice and resin as protagonists rather than supporting players. Thierry Wasser constructs something deliberately unbalanced here—a composition that leans heavily into the peppery bite of black and pink pepper whilst allowing myrrh to simmer beneath like incense smoke trapped in amber. The opening assault is bracing; grapefruit and pear arrive as crisp counterweights to the peppercorn sting, but they're never allowed to soften the fragrance's fundamentally austere character.
What distinguishes this scent is how the iris and rose in the heart don't sweeten the composition so much as add powdery texture to its spiced resinous core. The apricot provides a whisper of stone fruit warmth, but it exists in dialogue with myrrh rather than against it—the two creating something almost medicinal, slightly bitter, utterly compelling. There's an almost ritualistic quality here, reminiscent of temple incense rather than perfume counter ease.
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3.9/5 (153)