L'Heure Bleue Guerlain 1912Eau de Toilette

L'Heure Bleue (Eau de Toilette) by Guerlain

Bottle Design Raymond Guerlain

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Top 50 in Women's Perfume

8.6 / 10 129 Ratings

L'Heure Bleue (Eau de Toilette) is a popular perfume by Guerlain for women and was released in 1912. The scent is floral-powdery. It is being marketed by LVMH. Pronunciation

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Perfumer

Jacques Guerlain

Fragrance Notes

Top Notes	Aniseed, Bergamot
Heart Notes	Carnation, Neroli
Base Notes	Iris, Violet, Vanilla, Benzoin, Tonka bean

Ratings

Scent

8.6 | 129 Ratings

Longevity

7.9 | 122 Ratings

Sillage

7.4 | 122 Ratings

Bottle

8.9 | 120 Ratings

Submitted by Nibelung, last update on 07.01.2021.

Variant of the fragrance concentration

This is a variant of the perfume L'Heure Bleue (Eau de Parfum) by Guerlain, which differs in concentration.

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Reviews

01/04/2021

Tradescantia

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Tradescantia

Very helpful Review 6

Timeless - Antique Soul Comforting Pleasure

This fragrance is one of the most fascinating ever.

It is minimally spicy, strongly powdery and soft, but distinctly floral. I wish I could wear it once in St. Petersburg at the time of the so-called white nights.

As white nights, nights are called, in which the sun goes down only very briefly. A day has then on average 19 hours and it should be only slightly dim or even light. It must be a very special atmosphere. L'Heure Bleue is my imaginary epitome of this interesting phenomenon. There is a slight melancholy resonating in this powderiness, which is very natural here and comes from the violet note.

For me, it's a very feminine scent, as it reminds me of the scent of high-quality lipsticks, especially the smell of lipsticks from the Estée Lauder brand. Both anise and bergamot are clearly felt in the top note.
The bergamot gives here only a hint of freshness and remains rather dry. The anise note gives the overall work the necessary twist. Remotely, the fragrance reminds me of rummaging in antique shops, Earl Grey in the cold winter and a mood that arises when I treat my secretary with furniture polish. Time just stops for a moment.

Here, this perfume enjoys great popularity, but in general you rarely smell it, although it is as wearable today as it was in 1912, the year the Titanic was born and also died. A legend, which is also still remembered today.

The art nouveau flacon represents the fragrance excellent. From a purely chronological point of view, Gustav Klimt, who has been dormant since 1918, could have known the fragrance. His paintings "The Kiss" or even "Lady with Fan" capture the atmosphere that radiates L'Heure Bleue for me wonderfully. The curved corners of the bottle remind me distantly of the Guimard entrance of the Paris Métro.

This fragrance writes history just as the painter Gustav Klimt, Hector Guimard, Dostoyevsky or even Tolstoy.
To Anna Karenina this fragrance would have fit in any case.

I hope you enjoy this little olfactory journey through time.

2 Replies

11/16/2020

8.5
Scent 8
Longevity 8
Sillage 9
Bottle

Serenissima

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Serenissima

Top Review 26

"The spell in that magical moment...

... when the sky has lost the sun but not yet found the stars."
This is how Jacques Guerlain, the creative grandson of the company founder, felt about this beguilingly magical moment of the "blue hour".
It's that moment of the day when the first cocktails are drunk, the first flirtation attempts are made and - by the way - the new wardrobe is executed.
The "Belle Epoque" was the era in which Jacques Guerlain gave the ladies "L'Heure Bleue", among other things: a gift of the eternally feminine!

I can still remember the special charm of this moment; especially in Southern Europe I enjoyed it.
This changing, perfuming, rigging and then promenading before finding the right place for the first cocktail of the evening: The main thing is "see and be seen!"
The Italians call it "Il Corso!".
Recently, the "Blue Hour" seems to be a reference to drinks at half or two for one price. Their magic can only be seen at the cash register or on the credit card statement More suitable is really the term "After Work-Party"!

Floramalia was kind enough to also include a bottling of the Eau de Toilette of "L'Heure Bleue" in a scented letter to my bottling wishes. Thank you very much for that!
So I too can revel in this "blue hour"; nostalgia embraces me generously, numerous memories in tow!

A somewhat daring aniseed note follows bergamot, the classic of the fragrance door openers, on its feet here.
It causes a certain tingling in my nose, which comes with my pronounced pepper allergy. (Fortunately this one is deaf for once!)
The spicy classic carnation and "Princess Neroli" now appear: still fresh, but already sensual.
Both promise the path to a dreamlike oriental fragrance inner life, in which - this time as a basis - the proud iris, the no less shy fragrance violet (with an enchanting dark purple feathery powder puff), the equally powdery tonka bean and sensually warm vanilla hold court.
Benzoes' resinous ego finally combines all the so feminine scents into a harmonious whole!

It's time: "L'Heure Bleue" is born and lolls temptingly and flatteringly on warm, soft women's skin. And that far beyond the "Blue Hour".
Because this fragrance, like almost all Guerlain fragrances, develops as a very affectionate, pliable scent goddess, who says "Adieu!" very late in the day.
Even the eau de toilette contains a magic that is enough to last a whole night.
"L'Heure Bleue" is a wonderful entrée for lovers of the "blue hour" (and everything else that may follow).

Much better, I think, Jacques Guerlain himself describes this magical moment that inspired him to create this fragrance:
"This is an hour hanging in the air, an hour of silence, in which man is one with the world: the deep blue of the sky, a trembling of the air and a rustling in the leaves, almost invisible vibrations of water."

If we take in these impressions when we wear "L'Heure Bleue", we experience very special moments.
It's worth getting into!

15 Replies

03/10/2019

9.5
Scent 9
Longevity 8
Sillage 10
Bottle

Chanelle
1 Review

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Chanelle

Top Review 33

Immortal

L'heure bleue is one of Guerlain's undisputed masterpieces. As a young woman I admired him from afar, found him cold-sensual, but much too ladylike for young, wild and single me. Again and again I met him over the years, I read about him, smelled him at others and tested him now and then. At some point (more than 20 years ago) I bought a bottle and almost never used it, because it was too daring for the job or shopping, too noble to celebrate and too strong for more intimate things. So I felt my first eau de toilette L'heure bleue, and the bottle was never empty.
Then I smelled the Extrait, which brought me new knowledge concerning LHB: It goes even more powdery, at the same time also sweeter, going into the nutty and above all also more erotic! What a fragrance! But as with the incredible Liu Extrait - when to wear? Both fragrances demand an appropriate situation, environment and society. Otherwise I would feel as if I had committed a sacrilege, because - I do not exaggerate! - both have something almost sacred inne.
(Now back on the carpet, girl...)
Already in perfume times I bought a vintage EdT from LHB. This built the bridge between sacred and portable. It was powdery and wonderful and you could tell the proper dose of neroli I needed to put on the scent during the day. I never wanted to miss him again. Again I used it sparingly, but this time not for lack of opportunity, but for fear of never meeting LHB again in this perfect form for me. A piece of advice from another perfume group came to my aid: Aging!
I tried it. In spring 2017 I bought a freshly filled bee flacon with LHB EdT. I subjected the scent to a quick test and found it too weak, soulless and meaningless. The bottle was repacked and it went off to the basement.
Yesterday she was allowed to come up again. I filled a pocket bottle of it and sprayed myself generously. I was already where I wanted to be. Surrounded by a sea of heavy flower scents, a shaken amount of neroli and a delicate but not chaste powderiness. The fragrance had won, in two ways. He has indeed attained a maturity with which he now corresponds to what I had wished for from him. Besides, he won my heart. Now we can age together, but it makes me feel immortal.

11 Replies

11/25/2018

5.5
Scent 7
Longevity 8
Sillage 8
Bottle

Annarosa

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Annarosa

Not my thing

With " L' Heure Bleu", with this famous Guerlain classic, even in the moderate eau de toilette concentration, I can't do anything. For me it smells almost like the prelude of "Cornubia" by Penhaligons, which was made 2 to 3 times louder, more intense, but without the sweet honey chord of "Cornubia" in the course (for which I like her then anyway).
The scent of L'Heure Bleu feels as something artificially appearing aroma of salty almonds richly pollinated with the old face powder (make-up note, which "Cornubia" thank God does not have). The resulting aroma is unfortunately quite unpleasant and a no-go for me (although I of course know that many other people like the scent or that they feel it differently from me)
The latitude and the sillage of the fragrance are good.

1 Replies

11/07/2018

8
Scent 8
Longevity 7
Sillage 8
Bottle

Aventurin

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Aventurin

Top Review 32

The beautiful and the damned

I read some books at irregular intervals, including the wonderful autobiographical novel "Die Schönen und Verdammten" by Francis Scott Fitzgerald.

Gloria Gilbert and Anthony Patch are at the centre of this moving story. Two iridescent figures, idiosyncratic and gifted, wanderers between suffering and lust, emptiness and thirst for life, crashes and hope. They love the stormy heartbeat of the metropolis and the magnificent palette of beauty, sink into the dream of wealth and freedom and the wild, never-ending nights of the glamorous twenties. They are the shining star couple of every party, they live and celebrate decadently and freely.
Since both have little to gain from everyday life and conventional employment and have little pleasure at all in working, but all the more in consuming, the flow of big money stagnates; instead, plenty of tears and plenty of alcohol flow.

L'Heure Bleue is a fragrance that fits into this extravagant world - not because it captures the noisy flickering of untamed dance steps on shiny black parquet flooring, but because it swirls with all the ecstasy of escapism and reality, light and shadow.
He reveals violet-blue dream landscapes, underscores bitter tragedy,
glows pale coppery and white gold, is bitter and dry, flowery and powdery, complex and tenderly mysteriously interwoven.
It is a special, memorable scent, whose opulent carnation nostalgia certainly does not please everyone, it is not a scent for sober asceticism, it is one to be patiently fathomed to grasp its magic.
It heralds the end of one day and the beginning of the next, warm summer night magic and autumnal morning melancholy, when the hours of repentance and reflection dawn, when the glasses are emptied and the feet are sore danced.
When the pale sun unveils shine broken by grey stripes of cloud and wounded hearts, but the twilight leads back into the blue expanse, hand in hand, every day anew, illuminated by chandeliers, candlelight and hungry lurking souls.
A fragrance as special and fascinating as Gloria and Anthony and their whole colorful-abysmal cosmos.

And if Gloria Guerlain were to direct Guerlain's fate, perhaps this great classic would no longer exist, because when Anthony asks her "Don't you want to preserve the old? Everything beautiful grows only up to a certain height, then it begins to care, fades away and evaporates memories as it fades away. And just as every period of history passes in our minds, so also the things belonging to that period of time should pass away; in this way they will be preserved for a while in the few hearts that are receptive to it - in mine, for example."

L'Heure Bleue does not pass away, it preserves its beauty and continues to grow, like all that is good and precious, destined to stay and grow, and will reach some hearts in all times.

19 Replies

05/30/2018

8
Scent 7
Longevity 5
Sillage 7
Bottle

loewenherz

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loewenherz

Top Review 19

My nights are nicer than your days

This is now - after Eau de Parfum and Extrait - the presumed last comment I will write on L'Heure Bleue. Unless Guerlain decided to suddenly provide flankers to this Trinity (which they cultivate with many of their ancestors), which I would not expect, let alone hope for. Much of what is good and right at Guerlain has - within the framework of regulatory requirements - remained unchanged for a long time.

The first commentary on L'Heure Bleue - the Eau de Parfum - I wrote along Huysmans À Rebours, a classic of the decade literature of the Fin de Siècle. For the second - the Extrait - I tried the metaphor of Chazelles enchanted film wonder La La Land. For this last one, the Eau de Toilette, I use a film once again - one that describes yet another side of this great fragrance.

My nights are more beautiful than your days, in the French original: 'Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours', is the name of an expressive and crazy, infinitely sad film, based on the novel of the same name by Raphaële Billetdoux - a film that tells of the happiness of the moment, the vulnerability of beauty, the right to eccentricity, the intoxication of sensuality. And Guerlain's L'Heure Bleue does all that too.

L'Heure Bleue - the eau de toilette just a little less than its 'stronger' big brothers - is an intoxicating, incredibly multi-layered perfume. That exhausts its own transience to the point of exhaustion in a vortex of flowers, colours, bitterness. Lively. Urgent. The full-scale anise of perfume history. Violets all idle. Gold-clear sweetness far beyond what Monsieur Wasser fills today in Guerlains bottles.

Conclusion: one, perhaps THE classic from the pen of Jacques Guerlain. As opulent as Huysmans À Rebours. Dreaming is just as much a slave to tribute as Chazelles La La Land. As intoxicating and self-abandoning as Andrzej Zulawski's surreal and crazy film. It's a must to have had it up your nose.

2 Replies

04/19/2018

Matvey

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Matvey

Top Review 18

A frown and a childlike respite

For me, L'Heure Bleue is a personal, almost intimate fragrance with a special effect. Comments full of personal associations are one thing. They don't necessarily help to explain exactly how a fragrance smells. L'Heure Bleue is not a monothematic fragrance, and the listing of scents would not do justice to my impression. I can only name a few things objectively: Yes, carnation is an association I have with the smell. And the days I spent at work with beta-ionone I find myself gently reminded of it here. It would even fit in with the time of fragrance development, when synthetic fragrances were used in a very creative way. But that might be an illusion, because it sounds so conclusive to me. What's perhaps even more exciting is that I don't find the scent of carnation or beta-ionone alone very pleasant. My first reaction to the scent, however, is an immediate feeling of well-being - followed by a feeling of unruliness. And that's what I want to try to explain.

It begins with a diffuse memory, which is partly responsible for the calm, clear feeling I get when I smell L'Heure Bleue. It has something creamy at the beginning. I'm not talking about cream and vanilla sweetness, but real cream, maybe for the hands, maybe even Nivea. When I think about it, Nivea is almost the best comparison I could find, but probably wrong again. I feel transported back to my childhood self by the scent, which is soothingly creamed by its mother with a fragrant ointment. No melancholy, nothing wicked, and far from any twilight - it is a fragrance of security. A sigh of relief
However, over time, the secure feeling is broken by a stubborn note. It seems to me that adulthood suddenly throbs against the childish imagination. Let this note be carnation or whatever: something mature is added. Hah!: It "evolves". The chubby warmth cools down, complemented by rugged corners. No, it's nothing pungent, nothing biting. My friends and family just call what comes along old-fashioned. In the context of my fragrance description, this word fits in surprisingly seamlessly, but for my perception it would be too negative. What I feel is a bright, somewhat distanced tone with a polished sharpness. It is beautiful, but leaves me frowning. And a little bit it feels like the change from the fine cream to a piece of curd soap.

After several hours the fragrance regains a calm roundness and radiates more and more warmth. But from my perception of the fragrance, I like to wear L'Heure Bleue, but rarely. It is a fragrance for indifferent moods, if I can describe my own feelings as difficult as the fragrance itself. Definitely not a perfume that I wear for very social occasions. Most people find it takes getting used to me anyway, but maybe because of the mood I associate with it. It works best on cool, dry and bright days, possibly in autumn, and I only take one splash at a time. I haven't even mentioned that: even EdT does not lack strength and stamina. In high doses and in the long run it would even be penetrating. I can't always smell it that way. But every now and then I really need it, and sometimes I can express myself better with a scent than with a thousand words
Finally a nice experience, which I also associate with L'Heure Bleue:
When I bought the fragrance a good year and a half ago, a man in the perfumery promptly spoke to me enthusiastically: "A young man who buys L'Heure Bleue for himself?! - What followed was the best tour of a perfumery I've ever seen. It turned out that the man in question was the owner of another perfumery and was only a guest that day. And he apparently rarely saw this perfume, which he personally adored, being worn by men. And then also by young ones. From this he concluded (correctly!) that I am a perfume enthusiast and showed me his very personal favorites including the story behind them.

4 Replies

02/28/2016

9
Scent 8
Longevity 8
Sillage 10
Bottle

MasterLi
375 Reviews

MasterLi

A thing of beauty... is a joy forever.

L'Heure Bleue is really a perfume unlike any other. You sometimes have to ask yourself if a perfume is still being made over a century after it was first launched then it really must be quite something, in order to still be able to captivate hearts & minds.

The story is that the master perfumer Jacques Guerlain was one day walking along the banks of the river Seine in Paris during the "blue hour", the very last hour of daylight before evening sets it. In film & photography, this is known as "magic hour", when dusk is approaching twilight, and it is arguably the most beautiful time of day. He was overcome by emotion at that point and felt something so strong that he could only express it in a perfume, and so created L'Heure Bleue, or the blue hour.

This perfume is significant for many reasons... and it's symbolism runs deep. It was created in 1912, the year in which the Titanic sank (at that time the world's biggest ship). It was also released two years before the First World War, which would claim the lives of millions across Europe and elsewhere, and which would leave an entire generation devastated. To some, this perfume represents the last breath of an old world, a world which would later disappear and vanish forever.

The perfume itself follows a very elegant, masterful blend of gentle, sweet, evocative, refined powdery notes (most of which are so well blended that it's hard to pick out). It's very much like an impressionist painting, the painting itself is made up of a host of tiny dots with the paintbrush but which comes together to blend into a masterpiece of art and expression. To me it is a waxy, subdued, sweet, rich, slightly-gourmandish oriental floral perfume. The notes which stand out are iris, heliotrope and carnation, mixed with a deep, almost gourmand oriental vanilla (a typical hallmark of Guerlain). The iris provides the soft, powdery "waxy" note, whilst the strong heliotrope mixed with the vanilla gives a feeling of soft yet ever present sweetness in an almond desert kind of way. The carnation is a dusty floral feel in the background which contributes to this old and otherworldly feel.

For me L'Heure Bleue is a very special kind of perfume. In fact it's less of a perfume and more like an "experience". I have the Eau de Toilette, and I find it very easy to wear. There is nothing shocking about it, it just smells very different to anything you will find today. I really cannot explain the smell more than that, but the last thing I would say is that even if you never own this, at some point you should try it. If you have any serious interest in the appreciation of what perfume is, as a creation, then you should try this. If only to "experience" what it is all about. It doesn't smell modern, for sure, although it's still totally wearable in my opinion. Like some other complex perfumes, you may also need to have a lot of experience with smelling different types of fragrances, in order to really understand this. Try it, and you'll see what I mean. Incredible!