Carnal Elixers - These are the additions for Fall and will be only at the exclusive Guerlain Boutiques...Bergdorf, The Breakers, Neiman Marcus, SF.

Femme Fatal - white peach, rose, pachouli, vanilla
Femme Erotic - Clemintine almond, tonka bean, vanilla
Femme Enfant - black pepper, rose, rum, chocolate

75 ML EDP - $250.00

all of them sound good enough to drink! elixirs indeed.

There is NOTHING to compare with he Guerlain exclusives...........!!!

I would love to smell the Femme Fatale... I wonder if it's in SF yet? Or not till fall? I'll be taking a friend on a birthday sniffathon Sunday.

Oh my gosh- shoot me now. I know I am going to want one of these- I have bought Iris Ganache, Cuir Beluga and Cruel Gardenia for me and my daugter talked me out of the Spirituese Double Vanille- these new ones sound gorgeous. I love this line.

I really hate the trend of the big houses making these exclusive sets at premium prices. I understand there's an appeal to exclusivity, but it's getting a bit old and annoying now...

ITA. Those prices are ridiculous..and they charge 25 Euro for shipping, if you order from Paris (unless your order exceeds 400,00 Euro..)
I'm not buying it anymore.

Is this a new line from Guerlain? How would the bottles look like? (Very curious)

me, too.
sorry.
and i cannot afford them. maybe that's why.

Oh, lillie.
Moi non plus....

They'd have to be the Holy Grail, for that price.
And wear like iron.
In these economic times....

What's the hook on these? Is an "elixir" a different formula/concentration, or is it just a marketing term? It looks like that they are much simpler in their composition, too?

As usual, Chaya, you said it.


Honestly the only one that sounds appealing to me is the Erotic.

I'm not sure I like the sound of any of these particularly, but being a huge Guerlain fan (if somewhat lapsed of late) I would love to smell them. The "Enfant" especially sounds a little unpleasant.....

I also worry when they issue so many perfumes in a year.

I sniffed these at BGs the other day. The fragrances are really lovely. They will be at BG in August in 2.5 oz exquisite glass bottles ornamented with a silver-plated label. The label is edged with a vintage-looking floral garland. Can't wait for August.

oooooooooohhhhhhhh, yet another reason to go to Bergdorf's. As if I needed one.

I've been loving the L'Art et La Matiere offerings. They remind me of how excited I felt when I first discovered Serge Lutens. What bugs me is how the exclusive lines show me that the perfume companies are still perfectly capable of creating gorgeous fragrances, yet they mass market generic dreck to the department stores, and I can only afford the dreck these days - DRAT!! Why can't they make small coffers with 3 small .33 oz bottles where you choose your 3 favorite exclusives, and sell it for $120.

I agree. And I am getting increasingly P-Oed by these sleazy business practices. I gave up on Guerlain a while back, I am not giving them a cent, screw 'em. There are plenty of niche houses who still try to be ethical in producing their fragrances for me to choose from.
I would sooner wear a health food store perfume oil under 10 bucks or even no fragrance at all than keep pumping up those greed powered, over inflated sleaze houses.

I think Guerlain and Hermes are trying to implement similar strategies right now. They are both trying to regain some of the "exclusivity" in their perfume lines that they had for years - prior to the advent of wide open global markets, discounters, the Internet, and the thriving grey market.

Hermes and Guerlain realize that to make their target profit margins - they have to balance high-volume popular scents (e.g., Terre d'Hermes, Insolence) with lines that have a much more limited distribution. This will allow them to maintain their image as high-end luxury brands.

Guerlain, as we all know, has a wide variety of exclusive series - and Hermes has its Hermessences. The key to success here is that the firms TIGHTLY control the grey market for their exclusive fragrances - this will keep them from being discounted - and maintain that aura of luxury for their entire brand.

Hey, I'm a businessman. This seems logical from a marketing standpoint - but it's obviously highly frustrating from a perfumista standpoint. I think we are going to see this as the standard operating model for the next few years at least...

Teddius

Im a guerlain fanatic with their vintage signature perfumes and the ones they reissued particularly the guet apen renamed attrape coer. I have to say though, having purchased cuir beluga (which i love) , bois d'armanie and iris ganache and rose barbare (a friend got them for me in the paris shop before the dollar really plunged) i dont really get any notes that make them a signature guerlain. they are all lovely but if i tried them blind without knowing they were guerlain , i wouldnt pickthem out as guerlain at all . the closest i came to getting a bit of that from this line was the angelique. Ill try the new ones but they really dont hold a candle to classic guerlains at all. also another i love which is way to much money and isnt sold here is the violette de madame which again is gorgeous but doesnt have that underlying base of guerlain. i donnot think any of them will become classics. id rather pay an arm and a leg for a bottle of djedi then buy another line they have come out with. ducking now lol.

if they weren´t so expensive i´d love to sample them or even buy - but given the high price i kind of shy away from even smelling them...i might fall in love with one (or - even worse - with all of them LOL) & it´d upset me to know i cannot afford them.

even so it´s right that the l´art et la matière scents are somewhat inferior to the classic guerlains, i still like them very much for what they are, especially angélique noire.
i, too, doubt any of them will become a classic - which might also be due to the fact that they only reach a smaller audience because of their prices since IMO a classic must be widely available & affordable.

ps im revising my last post a bit . the iris ganache comes a little close. now that ive sprayed myself with all 4. lol. id also rather have a bottle of nahema than the rose barbare.

This has been mentioned before, but everytime I see "iris ganache", I think of a chocolate cake covered with irises.

Well, I for one, will not be buying them at that price, or the cost of gas to travel to get them.
The prices are outrageous and make it nigh impossible for the average perfumista to even contemplate affording them!!

BTW, I love your new avatar Teddius!!! You shaved 30 years off of your other pic.

At least we don't have to fuel our cars with Guerlain!

AMEN SISTER!!!

I am with you guys on this. Much too expensive and not easily available. The enfant and erotic seem delicious though.

Id love to try the femme enfant as the notes are very similar to rose poivre by the different co with the exception of the chocolate. in terms of the iris ganache, when i first tried it i very much picked up the choc note. i havent worn it in a while but when i put it on yesterday i didnt get that at all and it was much better and beautiful than the first time. of course i wontt be paying those prices.for 250 you can buy a reaaly great vintage perfume a la the coty chypres that have been looking at and btw gas just might hit those guerlain prices lol kind of. its close to 5 a gallon where i live.

I'd rather if Coty would relaunch their old classics like Chypre, La Rosejacqueminot, Paris de Coty, L'Origan and Emeraude again instead of all of these out of range for the average fragrancehouse like ourselves than these EXCLUSIVE Guerlains. I love Guerlain, don't get me wrong but I'm tired of these new launches every 3 weeks they keep putting out. I cannot keep up with the momentum they're going at. There are a lot of releases from the past 2 to 3 years of this revival of their older line that I have not smelled due to access to them here in the wasteland of living in the Las Vegas desert.

I know Coty did a really limited release of their older scents a year or two back but didn't care to even release them to the wider general public which irks me to no end here. SCREW YOU COTY!!!!

what astounds me is that they made hundreds well alot of perfumes in the history of guerlain and why dont they reissue those instead ; they had a chypre, djedi, an original la violette from 1904 and i dont know if its the same but there were soooo many. i guess they are marketing to the general masses as their sales strategy. what a shame because they could market them the same way a la lui, violette, attrape coer, etc.

Did Guerlain change the names of the perfumes in this line? The bottles look very much like L'Art et la Matière.

Probably because the mass public doesn't have descriminating taste like us!!

Elysium those bottles look divine! I got the latest catalogue from Guerlain in Paris yesterday, coincidentally, and it doesn't mention these, nor does it mention any of their limited edition re-issues like Voilette de Madame or Vega (which I already have). Probably just as well as I am already hankering after so many things.....

The new line will be introduced in October, so it makes sense that they are not included in the current price list. I have also noticed that they don't list the Il Était Une Fois Guerlain line in the price catalogue, Voilette de Madame on the other hand is already sold out.

Hope not as I just ordered it the other day!

Please please let me know how it went. I have heard from both Mr. Guerlain and carmencanada that VdM is gone and moaned since then!

Rufus, the Coty reeditions that you refer to (and may have read about in Luca Turin's column) were made in 2004 exclusively for the 100th anniversary of Coty. They were never released at all, just offered as gifts in Baccarat bottles to a select few people at the party which celebrated the anniversary. Which makes it no less frustrating, I'll admit.
I agree with you that Guerlain is going at breakneck pace, which in a way somewhat depreciates their offerings -- it's like, it can't all be that good if there's so much of it (or "be all that good"?).

I haven't been overly impressed by their "seasons" box, or by Quand Vient La Pluie, which is just as well, considering the prices...

More info available for anyone interested in those Carnal Elixirs.

Click here!

Thank you, Helg (I think - oh no! More Guerlain lusting). Why do they have to make the jus pink and purple though? Those happen to be my favourite colours, but I think they are just wrong for "serious" perfume.

Has anyone bought or sniffed any of the new Guerlain Carnal Elixirs yet? If so, would love to hear thoughts and impressions.

A huge AMEN to that. The level of cynicism involved with that box just astounded me - they put an Aqua Allegoria, of all things, in that "seasons" box! With that kind of a price tag?!
Nothing to do with luxury at this point, just milking the "exclusive" market for all it's worth. A kind of snobbery tax, maybe?

I'm sure the Guerlain marketing people know what they're doing, from the point of view of sales, but I don't like the direction this house has been taking... They're launching extravagantly priced limited editions and/or new series left and right (remember, there were a couple of scented oils last year? What became of that?), the Les Parisiennes line-up of JP Guerlain re-editions keeps changing without warning, the L'Art et la Matière are mostly excellent, but very highly priced for fairly mainstream scents, the classics are being stealthily discontinued. And now these.

I'll be curious to smell them, of course, but I'm not saving my pennies... I wish they would invest more in re-editing some of the Jacques Guerlain classics (Djedi, Cachet Jaune, Kadine, Bouquet de Faunes) in the Il était une fois Guerlain line, but I guess that's not the way to go to attract young customers on the one hand, Russian oligarchs able to afford 2000 dollar bottles on the other hand...

Carmen I agree entirely. With such a magical, fabulous back catalogue and I am sure many customers who long for the pre-LVMH days, it seems crazy for them not to extend the Il Etait Une Fois Guerlain line. The grand and elegant ladies and gentlemen I always used to see in the Guerlain boutiques in Paris can't entirely have been superseded by kids buying sparkly, inconsequential fruity florals, can they?

I completely agree. And you pinpointed exactly why I wasn't completely in love with the L'Art et la Matière: beautiful, but rather mainstream (except, for me, Bois d'Arménie, and subdued as it is, I still love Cruel Gardenia).
I don't know what's going on exactly with the Parisiennes, as it does seem that some of them, while still on sale at the Champs boutique, are vanishing all of a sudden from the paper catalog (where are Métalys and the Chant d'Arômes extrait?). And the oils, ah! I've seen those once at the boutique, then never again

Honestly, I am curious about these Elixirs, and very eager to try them. On the other hand, I'd give an arm and a leg for them to get back to the Il Etait Une Fois collection!

Pastel juices with "carnal" and "erotic" in the names. How original.

I am just plain old.

Sing it, sister.