VINTAGE - Guerlain Mitsouko EDT

Guerlain Mitsouko is the Guerlain scent that is the standard for uniqueness in perfumery. It was launched in 1919 (100 years ago!), created by Jacques Guerlain.  The inspiration was "La Bataille," a story of an ill-fated love between Mitsouko (Japanese Admiral Togo's wife) and an unnamed British officer. Both men were in the war on opposite sides, they went into battle against each other, and Mitsouko waited to see who returned. 

Mitsouko was much loved by stars of the era - Jean Harlow, Charlie Chaplin and Anais Nin. It is a deeply complicated perfume that is hard to love and also easy to love.  Again, I will post snippets from a lot of reviews below, and they will conflict, and you will think, huh?  But there are a thousand stories in Mitsouko, and it is different for each wearer.

This is the vintage  Eau de Toilette, EdT version of Guerlain's classic Mitsouko.  This particular version was bottled in the one pictured and dates quite a ways back.  The standard in chypre fragrances, Mitsouko features notes of bergamot, peach, jasmine, rose, oakmoss, vetiver, pepper and cinnamon. It is an Eau de Toilette, EdT.

From Perfume Shrine - "The composition of Mitsouko was revolutionary at the time, even though it updated and -arguably- improved on the seminal formula of F.Coty's Chypre: The innovative peach-skin note perceived at the heart of the Guerlain fragrance derives from a modern synthetic ingredient, aldehyde C14 or gamma undecalactone (Peach essence cannot be naturally extracted). The inclusion of the famous base Persicol ("bases" are ready made smell-chords for perfumers) which included it contributes to the peachy, warm effect. Flanked by murky oakmoss and refreshing bergamot at each end ~thus composing a classic chypre chord~, it adds spicy accents reminiscent of cinnamon and cloves ~especially felt in the Eau de Toilette version which circulated till recently.  

Mitsouko also utilizes rose, neroli (a light-smelling orange blossom distillation product), woods, vetiver and patchouli for a short but succinct formula which balances itself between apothecary and pattiserie. The candied orange peel effect mollifies every herbal aspect, while the flowers are so subdued and well-blended as not to be discernible as such; if abstraction is elegance, then Mitsouko is very elegant indeed, without nevertheless losing its sensuality; there's a furry little animal hiding underneath it all, although you can't really place it!

"Different concentrations and different vintages produce different effects. Vintage parfum extrait is so rich and luscious as to render experiencing Mitsouko a rare occasion of olfactory satiation. The oakmoss galore of as recent crops as Eau de Toilette and Parfum de Toilette from the 1980s and early 1990s is exquisite in its unsettling, deeply mossy ambience. The modern Eau de Parfum version reworked by Edward Flechier (this happened in early 2007 due to oakmoss restrictions imposed by European Union legislature, with Eau de Toilette being the first to reformulate) is the best rendition closer to the original idea, while the current Eau de Toilette seems thinned and yielding a bread, yeasty note which I personally feel is incongruent with the image which I have in my head of it."

From Olfactoria's Travels - "Not so Mitsouko (at least for now). All I get is damp cellar and hot swamp. My nose is, for some reason yet to be determined, not able to smell the fabled peach, to smell any floralcy, nothing. All I get is the swamp. And I can't find it in me to like the swamp. I almost see the stones flying at me from all directions, and isn't that Luca Turin over there throwing his book at me?"

From Persolaise - "It remains pensive, mature and unreadable, but now, it also sparkles. Whereas in recent years, it had become somewhat more inward-looking, its current iteration gazes straight into the heart of the world with a smile that is welcoming and magnetic in equal measure. Mitsouko had started becoming all about breadth, but now its height has been restored, plunging from bergamot to woods to mosses with irresistible clarity. It is a multi-faceted shimmer of delight. Seek it out... and fall in love all over again. "