Behind the Scenes: My Love Affair with GUERLAIN

From Shalimar Skeptic to Guerlinade Groupie. Bougie Uncle is hooked!

Hi boo,

For my paid subscribers only, I'm sharing something special today - an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at my unexpected love affair with a fragrance house that has completely captured my heart: GUERLAIN.

How I Found Guerlain

I've been doing a lot of podcasts lately (go listen to the one I did for Fat Mascara - it's a great episode) and some press for Marie Claire with Refinery29, where I've been recommending perfumes. And I realized something - there's a perfume brand that keeps coming up: GUERLAIN.

This is wild because I was born in Zimbabwe, grew up in South Africa, and to me, GUERLAIN just meant Shalimar, the classic. Some people call it a grandma fragrance, but it's really an every-person fragrance - quite magical, ambery, complex, opulent, amazing.

The Moment Everything Changed

GUERLAIN flew me to New York a few months ago (last year sometime) to celebrate the release of Patchouli Paris , and I got to meet the perfumer. And boo, I learned SO MUCH.

This experience showed me what makes truly luxury legacy fragrance brands so great. Of course, there's the heritage of GUERLAIN - they invented some of the first synthetic molecules that are loved in perfumery. They've got their icons like Mitsouko and Shalimar. But the artistry is at the core.

The Secret GUERLAIN Accord

This is something most people don't know about: there's the "Guerlinade" - that signature chord that many GUERLAIN fragrances have. It's six ingredients used in most all their creations since the 1920s: vanilla, bergamot, tonka bean, iris, rose, and jasmine.

It's warm, it's complex. It's like this unique, really perfumed feeling that I love. To me, that's what IS perfume - that signature combo. It's almost like a powdery wax, or like iris-y cake. I don't know how to describe it. It's so delicious.

When you learn about the care that goes into the ingredients, and then all of the care designers put in, that's what told me that brands need deep brand stories. I've really come to appreciate GUERLAIN on a whole new level.

Exclusive Subscriber Content!

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