Horizon Guy Laroche 1993 Eau de Toilette

Horizon (Eau de Toilette) by Guy Laroche

Bottle Design Thierry Lecoule

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7.6 / 10116 Ratings

Horizon (Eau de Toilette) is a popular perfume by Guy Laroche for men and was released in 1993. The scent is aquatic-fresh. The production was apparently discontinued.

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Perfumer

Alain Astori

Fragrance Notes

Top Notes	Aldehydes Grapefruit Green notes Mandarin orange Sea salt Mint
Heart Notes	Artemisia Fennel Galbanum Bay leaf Petitgrain Pimento Black pepper Thyme
Base Notes	Moss Patchouli Sandalwood Cypress

Ratings

Scent

7.6116 Ratings

Longevity

7.282 Ratings

Sillage

6.681 Ratings

Bottle

6.896 Ratings

Submitted by MaxFavier, last update on 10.10.2021.

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Reviews

09/26/2021

8
Scent 7
Longevity 7
Sillage 6
Bottle

Schallhoerer

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Schallhoerer

Broadening the horizon

Drakkar Noir is a fragrance that has accompanied me for many years. There is hardly a fragrance to which I reach more often when I do not know what to wear. Guy Laroche has so with this fragrance with me absolutely a stone in the board
That one may limit a brand but not on only one fragrance, shows here Horizon. Horizon is an incredibly fresh fragrance with aquatic impact. However, not the light blue kind of aquatic that one often associates with this genre. Horizon goes in a different direction than usual aquatics. In fact, to me, Horizon is more of an herbaceous green aquatic. I rather think of a deep green sea covered in algae and haunted by storms and waves. The opening is a direct reach into the herb garden. Thyme, allspice, fennel, bay leaf are just a few of the notes that make up this scent. The start may put some off, as Horizon doesn't want to come across as pleasing here. Here, the sea air blows harsh and cool around your nose. The sea salt in the top note is reminiscent of the sea spray when waves break just offshore. Fennel and allspice give the fragrance for a brief moment a slight "soup spice" character, but are then moved by thyme and the cypress in the background.

This is a fragrance that may seem out of time to some today. I would even argue that you have a fragrance here that was ahead of its time in 1993. To this day, I know of few aquatics that go in this direction. An imitator would be the Kenzo Pour Homme, which goes in a similarly tart, herbaceous direction, but at no time can reach the intensity of Horizon.

The shelf life is 8-9 hours. For a fresh fragrance so more than convincing.

The only problem is that it is no longer marketed and discontinued. In Germany, there is currently no reliable dealer. But if you are not afraid of the detour via foreign countries, you can get the 50ml flacons for example from FragranceX for under 8€. Yes, I didn't make a mistake there. 7,95 EUR. I have secured me back then many years ago directly quite a few flacons of it.

Who stands on absolutely masculine and aquatic-fresh fragrances, but the focus is not on the azure-blue sea, but on an emerald-green sea, will find the perfect companion in the Horizon

4 Replies

07/15/2021

8
Scent 9
Longevity

Intersport

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Intersport

Top Review 16

Horny algae

No genre has been so fervently disliked and reviled for years as the so-called aquatic. How long the term has been in use is beyond me, the history of the infamous Camilli, Albert & Laloue Ketone 'Calone' is also covered here in the database and reviews. Aramis' New West for Her (Skinscent) is often mentioned as a first with the Tropional/Calone combination. Another reference that came across as more maritime than aquatic was Goutal's Vétiver in which Isabelle Doyen used Algenone in 1995. Through ongoing encounters with neo-aquatics - nice word - from trashy to spiky to quaint, I hooked one recently - here's a look at maritime proto-aquatics, no New West Skinscent for her, no Kenzo pour Homme; neutral: Horizon.

No Escape. When Horizon was released in 1993 there was almost no escape, the extensive advertising campaign photographed by Herb Ritts, including video clip, was omnipresent, staff in perfumeries always ready to suggest Horizon. Drakkar Noir's massive success certainly provided a perfect springboard to promote Laroche's experiment. In addition to water-underwater imagery, there was another, historical motif that Guy Laroche somehow got his hands on or meticulously re-staged: George Hoyningen-Huene's 1930 photograph "Divers (Horst With Model)," a swimwear motif in which Horst P. Horst and Lee Miller are models. Great.

Visible is also notable in the bottle, one of the most thoughtful of the early 90's - a reprise/reuse of the shape of the Drakkar bottles, only this time made of scuffed transparent blue rock. Although the slightly rubbery lid seems a bit cheap, this cleverly picks up on the surface texture and complements it beautifully.

Advertising and packaging clearly speak to water, sea, distance: all themes that have been incorporated into the Aquatik complex, yet Horizon is an idiosyncratic experimental fougère construction, bursting with synthetics and iridescent more green-blue or blue-green than its appearance suggests. The whole thing could also have come from a tropical fruit shop in the entryway of a swimming pool, dripped as shower gel resin from an incised pine tree, or flourished in an alpine garden aerated with copious aldehydes, next to imaginary pine trees, ensnared by lavender, mint, currant, and geranium, all chilled on menthol. This change of scenery may also have been the starting point for Jean Paul Guerlain's Aqua Allegoria Gentiana - despite gentian bearing striking similarities to Horizon.

In its genealogy, Horizon was perhaps conceived - albeit at a distance in time - in a line with Cool Water, New West for Him, and Kenzo pour Homme, but seems more artificially playful overall, and more complex with fruity-floral and bitter-herbal components plus a set moss/patchouli/conifer base. Proto-Aquatik remains for me, at least in its first attempts, a thoroughly modern project in which (isolated) protagonists did not so much propose an image evoking water et. al. as advertise a new direction and otherness. Horizon, despite its slight eccentricity, is more classical and a building block of this time, more ambiguous in profile than the round of neo-Aquats who lose themselves in an unrealistic realism that could also be the subject of an IPISCA midterm exam.

What is ultimately responsible for the proto-aquatic impact in Horizon remains open. Calone cleverly hidden or, as with some that smells, pheromonics, as argued by Richard E. Moore, a chemist at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu in 1976 - 'Volatile Compounds from Marine Algae'?

8 Replies

07/04/2021

9
Scent 8
Longevity 7
Sillage 7
Bottle

Bleauri

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Bleauri

More sea than others

For decades I was no longer aware of having owned this EDT until I came across a picture of the bottle on the internet. Exactly..... there was this interesting fragrance from one or two summer seasons, back on the cusp of the 90s.... So far, the only fragrance that no longer exists that I've bothered to track down a bottle of from old stock. To promptly discover that the likely citrusy components of the top note in this Asbach bottle are toppled and, yes, smell disgustingly rotten. Then again, they only linger for a brief moment before releasing the core component of this unique scent: salt water, seaweed and brackish wooden planks. The whole thing was obviously looking for proximity to all the aquatic scents at the time and also had a hint of "Drakkar Noir" from the same house in it, but was basically so tart that something completely different, own came out of it. Great. In the condition in which I own it, definitely no longer wearable in public, but a pleasure in between to sniff it at home.

Addendum: Layered with the citrus notes of Cartier's "Declaration L'Eau", the fragrance still works quite decently.

1 Replies

06/20/2021

7
Scent 7
Longevity 7
Sillage 8
Bottle 9
Pricing

ChicoRoch1
51 Reviews

ChicoRoch1

Good Guy Laroche Drakkar flanker

Bought 2 bottles for under $35 which is an incredible bargain, considering the both bottles are 28 yrs old, according to the batch codes. Anywho the opening is quite harsh for an aquatic scent but settles down after a couple hrs. It's not a longevity champ by any means but then again what aquatic fragrance is? They destroyed Acqua Di Gio so i had to overpay for a vintage bottle from 2000. Horizon had REAL OAKMOSS which i love and that makes all the difference in the world. I think I'll keep them both.

09/17/2015

WildGardener
218 Reviews

WildGardener

End of the Aquatic Age

Its easy to pick out the head notes of mandarin and salt, but after that things get a bit more tricky.
Grapefruit - yes, but rose & jasmin, thyme & black pepper? All three pyramids I've copied out into my notes suggest totally different things in the heart phase, and while all of them contain some truths none of them can be relied on.

When wearing this it comes across to me as a salt fruity-aquatic, with pepper grapefruit and herbal overtones. It's spiny on the outside and soft in the centre where acrid and fluid textures meet.

The note pyramids come together again in the base to agree on moss patchouli and sandal. It takes only a short hour or two to go from mandarin to moss and leaves behind itself a coarse smelling mossy salt.
(This is real oakmoss here in all its starkness.) I'm not sure that chypre's a good base for an aquatic perfume, they aren't suited together, despite the salty link.

What is certain is that it was released five years later than Cool Water. Horizon's form of aquatic genre, species salt follows in a style that had run its course and, smelling a bit old and dated would within a year be blown away by CK One.

07/10/2015

ColinM
516 Reviews

ColinM

Helpful Review 3

Green fun!

Horizon by Laroche is a really fascinating scent, I wouldn’t define it a “good” scent but it’s surely much intriguing, quite ahead of its time for me and making a creative use of both green fougère structure and fruity-floral-aquatic accords. That’s what I get here in fact – basically a sort of “aquatic-fruity-floral fougère”, a slap of green-fruity watery freshness (imagine a Mediterranean breeze of pine and warm sea) on a more conventional green-mossy fougère, both blended with a graceful accord of flowers (dark carnation, bright pastel cyclamen) and a recognizable note of orange. Sort of Givenchy Insensé meets Cool Water and both meet Pino Silvestre. Still a bit cheap, but in a fun way - and pleasant above all, that’s what counts. The name “Horizon” quite fits the scent, as it really radiates a peaceful feel of contemplation and calm with a joyful, vibrant natural vibe – and a brilliant vein of “classic” barbershop notes giving just right amount of “civilized elegance”. Really enjoyable and decent, just a bit screechy at the very opening and not the classiest scent around (it’s quite loud especially on the green-fruity side), but an uplifting fun little gem.

7,5/10