When I uploaded my review of Guerlain Shalimar onto YouTube, yays and the nays came flooding in -- along with a handful of gents who chimed in on Shalimar's suitabilty as a men's scent. One of them, TSXAgility, has even devised a dude-friendly code name for Shalimar:
When people ask this fella what cologne I have on when I'm wearing Shalimar EdT, I tell them it's Favre. It works every time.
And onto the nays. whafah says:
I really dont like Shalimar...even if they say IT'S THE best frag in the world - i dont agree at all - i like heavy scents but not shalimar. Why evrbody crazy about it??
The answer comes from daisynation:
I love to think of Ava Gardner putting this on before meeting Frank Sinatra. I love its perfect balance of heavy and light, the morning sunrise amber and vanilla, the lemon of gin and tonics, the musk of seduction.
To conclude, Sevipants19 posed a kind of heavy-breathing phone call question...in reverse:
Ok, if I'm wearing shalimar...what kind of clothes am I wearing?
My answer:
You're either wearing a party dress...or nothing.
Shalimar is available from Sephora.com, Amazon.com, FragranceNet.com, FragranceX.com, and Perfume.com, starting at $33 for 1 oz
My hubby smells great in my Shalimar (parfum)! Which isn't too surprising, given that his favorite perfume is Bulgari Black.
ReplyDeletedeeHowe, I make that Shalimar/BB connection, too.
ReplyDeleteI must have this as part of my DNA. My Mother (1929) wore this before I was thought of, to.... still. While I do agree it has magnetic powers; I can't wear it as it takes me back to being a kid thinking of playing dress up in her room.
ReplyDeleteShalimar either appeals to me or irritates me. Maybe it's the opoponax and citrus combo that makes me shrink away. I'm not sure. But give me vintage Shalimar parfum and I'm there. It's not just gourmand. It has a leathery, animalic growl to it. The lighter concentrations just don't have that, nor do newer formulations.
ReplyDeleteI just recentl caved and bought a small bottle of vintage extrait and an ounce of vintage EDT. Having once broken an entire bottle (the big round one) in my great-aunt's bathroom, I didn't have the best memories of the scent. But...wow. I can't wait for the first cold night. It has talons. The sweetness is just there to draw the unsuspecting in.
ReplyDeleteAh, Shalimar, the ode to the industrial revolution. Word has it that the working title was "a truck full of vanilla pudding crashes into a tire manufacturing plant"
ReplyDeleteI just tried Shalimar for the first time yesterday. I have to say, at first spray, it wasn't my cup of tea. But then after a little while (30 minutes maybe) it smelled amazing on my skin.
ReplyDeleteThe lady at the perfume counter was quite impressed that someone my age (25) came in to check out Shalimar. Ha!
I find it fun to flip up my skirt above my head, with or without Shalimar, though admittedly with the gorgeous S it is much more intriguing.
ReplyDeleteKatie I wear my pure parfum Shalimar and Musc Ravageur oil (purchased on recent trip to LA because of your lovely review!) in tandem and I LooVe the results. As does the monsieur. :-)
ReplyDeleteKeep the awesome videos coming!
Jelena (ooloi82)
I also hanker Shalimar. It was the first perfume I bought with my very own first student loan money. At that time I thought it was a cupcake smell..all lemon vanilla..and this was an era when no other cupcake smell had pinkified out the horizon. At that time it also seemed the height of sophistication. I went back to it recently..yes, it has changed....but I still get a thrill from it. It would be enormously interesting on a man I believe.
ReplyDeleteThank you, all, for sharing your insightful and evocative comments.
ReplyDeleteMelissa and Olfacta, in the hankerin' dept, I'm certainly keen to try vintage Shalimar parfum. Its sweet growl sounds like what I'm loving in Francis Kurkdkian Absolue Pour le Soir.
Gypsy Bride: wowie wow wow! Shalimar parfum and Musc Ravageur oil? Call Security!
Max, you wag!
To me it's exactly the tire manufacturing plant that saves Shalimar from Death by Vanilla.
ReplyDeleteIt has taken me 4-5 years to learn to like Shalimar. And now I know it's only a matter of time.
I believe it was perhaps Bulgari Black that pushed me over the edge down into peculiar rubber (vanilla)perfume land (my favorite along with sweaty armpit niffs) - I'd like to try BB together with Shalimar - and I think this is the part of me that pictures myself as a Marlene Dietrich-esque woman that's talking here - MD wearing black leather pants resting, standing, one foot resting on a chair, slowly reeling in her prey. A-hm. Well, there's no harm in trying, I suppose....
And in the meantime, I'll find my bottle of Hypnotic Poison, now that temperatures are dropping rapidly in my part of the world - rubber-vanilla is not a summer thing, really.
Junelady, only perfume can travel a soul from a tire manufacturing plant, to Marlene D, to fishing for prey. Marvelous!
ReplyDeleteFor me this is just a no. It's the combination I don't like. I like smoky amber and vanilla, and I like dry lemon, but I don't like them together. Its like, ew, get this lemon out of my vanilla, and this could be great.
ReplyDeleteMy second holy grail! What a great review for a superb fragrance that definitely stood the test of time!
ReplyDeleteI think that Max has it right, with a slight modification. "A truck full of vanilla pudding crashes into a tire manufacturing plant next to a grove of lemon trees." But the vintage has just a bit of something more....
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jake. Is your first holy grail Habanita?
ReplyDeleteMelissa, we can modify this to: "A truck full of vanilla pudding crashes into a tire manufacturing plant next to a grove of lemon trees, just missing kjanicki, who is carrying a sign protesting the lemon grove's existence."
Great review, Katie! I wish I could like Shalimar, but it is among the few Guerlains I just can't stand. I tried it a few times and it became a migraine trigger. I just can't put my finger on what bothers me so much about it... maybe it's the leather or the citrus opening. Too bad, it does smell sophisticated, but not a scent for me...
ReplyDeletePerfect timing, Katie. I bought Shalimar this past weekend in Vegas. I have crossed over to the darkside. This being my first ahem "Woman's perfume". Learn that mass media adverts are dead wrong. Brainwashing us since birth. Now where is that bottle of Jicky.
ReplyDeleteSabrina, Shalimar does have a quality that does shiver people's timbers, and not in a good way. My sister can't stand it.
ReplyDeleteGojira, can't wait to hear how you get along with Jicky.
Katie:
ReplyDeleteThere are only a few perfume classics that I have had a difficult time appreciating. Shalimar and Mitsouko at at the top of the list. I admit I am only 3 years into my perfume obsession, and I frequently return to samples of Shalimar and Mitsouko to see if I "get them yet." With Shalimar I could not get past a certain powdery, dated smell that reminded me of my grandmother's purse. But recently I came back to Shamilar after exploring Angel and A*Men Pure Malt, and VOILA: I GET SHALIMAR! I like it! I wear it! I still cannot discern any peach in Mitsouka, just a yeasty bread smell. But I will keep working on it. Thanks for the lovely review.
Scott
For years I couldn't understand Shalimar's appeal, but I knew I had to. Here was this fragrance that's been around since the 20s, I had to be missing out on something. And sure enough, it clicked one day and I finally came around to it. Now I want to hoard a bunch of vintages and see how she was compared to how she is now.
ReplyDeleteTried the eau de parfum at Sephora. Love the peppery, smokey opening; not as keen on the subsequent lemon cake and vanilla powder that lasts an eternity. Too sweet and genteel - I like my orientals a little rougher. And frankly, Angel seems more inherently wearable by men (so! Much! Patchouli!) than the cupcakey Shalimar. But I do want to try the parfum, which is apparently the only way to really appreciate the classic Guerlains. (Of course. Can't make it easy on us.)
ReplyDeleteOn the plus side...the bottle. And the name. And the context. *Sigh*
Scott and Kay, that's it, exactly - certain perfumes need time and retesting and new contexts to "get" them. I was the same with Shalimar. And with you guys chiming in with "oh, but VINTAGE Shalimar is the REAL Shalimar", I still feel I won't really know Shalimar until I start going down the eBay rabbit hole of vintage perfume shopping. And I'm a little scared to open up that whole other layer o' crazy.
ReplyDeleteDarryl, the interesting thing about Shalimar is that just about everyone who smells it, including me, has an idea about how to make it "perfect". Trouble is, no one agrees on what that is. Some would lose the lemon, others would cut the vanilla, others still would tamp down the powder. So Shalimar stands as it is: a monument, an icon, a battle line.
I wouldnt want to smell like my mother.
ReplyDeleteWhy would you?
freshman - well, my mom wore Estée Lauder Youth Dew, so no clash there. But if you're referring more generally to wearing a fragrance embraced by an earlier generation, there are so many different answers to your "why" question.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, there's a wondrous time-travel element to wearing a scent beloved by people who lived long before you. It's an intimate way to experience an aspect of life in the 40s, 30s, 20s -- or even before. Have you been reading about scientists recreating the perfume of an ancient Pharaoh queen from the resin of a clay pot in her tomb? I would LOVE to wear that recreation! Oh, to smell like a Pharaoh queen!
Secondly, those who happily adopt the perfume worn by their own mother do so because it conjures positive associations. And it's a way to experience the comfort of a loved one who may no longer be with them.
And finally, people wear an older generation's fragrance simply because they love the smell.
KP- Thanks, Jake. Is your first holy grail Habanita?
ReplyDeleteYou know me so well!!
Oh yes, Jake!
ReplyDeleteLMAO at "A truck full of vanilla pudding crashes into a tire manufacturing plant next to a grove of lemon trees." I'd describe Shalimar as lemon pie + creme brulee + tar (and underneath that Oriental carpet lingers a bit of skank). Yes, I love it. It's taken me a long time to "get" the Guerlains, but I keep falling in love with one after another - Shalimar, L'Heure Bleue, Mitsouko - can Chamade and Jicky be far behind?
ReplyDeletePatty, I do believe I'm beginning to really appreciate Jicky.
ReplyDeleteWell, very nice video perfume review
ReplyDelete