Guerlain Shalimar Turns 100

If you love ambery fragrances, you have one perfume to thank: Guerlain Shalimar, widely recognized as the first amber perfume. Originally created in 1921, the perfume was released in 1925 at the Paris Art Deco Exhibition.

Shalimar was named after ‘The Gardens of Shalimar’ located in Lahore, Pakistan, built by Emperor Shah Jahan for his wife Mumtaz Mahal. They are fabled to have been deeply in love, inseparable throughout their marriage. They had 14 children together, her final childbirth claiming her life at the young age of 39. He built the Taj Mahal, one of the 7 wonders of the world, in her memory.

It was their love for each other that inspired Jacque Guerlain to name the perfume so. He believed that the scent of vanilla had aphrodisiac properties, so it is no wonder that he would name one of the first synthetic vanilla perfumes based on a love story. It is said that the idea for Guerlain Shalimar emerged when he dumped a vial of ethylvanillin into a bottle of Jicky, Guerlain’s oriental fougere for women.

I haven’t been fortunate enough to smell the original Shalimar Parfum, but this is what we know:

Vanilla perfumes are dime a dozen these days, but none of that would’ve happened without the isolation of vanillin, the compound responsible for the universally loved fragrance and flavour of vanilla. The vanilla of Shalimar is so magnificent, Ernest Beaux (the creator of Chanel N°5) famously said, “If I had used that much vanilla, I would have ended up with sorbet or custard. But Jacques Guerlain created a masterpiece, Shalimar!” 

The result of all that vanilla is a deep, sensual perfume that has stood the test of time. 

It was luxurious but not the silent kind of sophistication that is popular today.

It welcomed you with bright and energetic citruses, capturing the excitement of the 20s, and flowers that bloomed at night. It was dark, spicy, and felt like an elixir from faraway lands for an audience that had never smelled something so beautiful before. The base was a combination of everything deep and comforting with additions of some animalic facets. Hearing about it now, it feels like the representation of hedonism with its dark, velvety personality and popularity with flappers.

It captures a moment in time, of the roaring twenties, when the west was enjoying a huge economic boom and hence more adventurous. It feels like a direct contrast to the present where we’re still reeling from the economic downfall accelerated by you-know-what from 2020 with no sign of improvement in the near future. We’re retracting into our shells, afraid to stand out and turning to skin scents and fragrances that invoke fresh laundry to find comfort in a time of global anxiety.

An advertisement for the fragrance from 1926 describes the perfume so:

Today, $22 would be around $400 today, only a small indication of the luxurious nature of this product. A price that is seen only in niche perfumes these days. The description of the perfume in the ad shows the exoticization of a general ‘East’, stripping the regions of their unique cultures and homogenizing them as a singular exotic ‘other’.

Shalimar has seen many iterations, its formula changed a few times to fit modern sensibilities. The modern Shalimar Parfum is composed so:

In celebration of Shalimar’s 100 year anniversary, Guerlain is launching a brand new limited edition Shalimar– Guerlain Shalimar L’Essence. It’s created by Delphine Jelk and is meant to center vanilla with woody, leathery notes and a suave personality. It could be a reinvention of Shalimar, the way Chanel attempted to modernize N°5 with the creation of N°5 L’Eau.  I’ll take everything it offers except the strange choice of labeling on the bottle…

Which Shalimar fragrance is your favorite?