Jacques Guerlain

Personal

Vocation

Notable

French master perfumer from a long family line who became the third master perfumer of the House of Guerlain, one of the oldest perfume houses in the world. Among Jacques Guerlain's most important creations are Mouchoir de Monsieur (1904), Après L'Ondée (1906), L'Heure Bleue (1912), Mitsouko (1919), Vol de Nuit (1933), and Guerlain's flagship fragrance Shalimar (1925). Jacques composed his final perfume, Ode (1955), with the assistance of his grandson, the then-18-year-old Jean-Paul Guerlain. Anecdotes about the naming of the perfumes: Vol de Nuit or night-flight was created in 1933. It was named after Antoine de Saint Exupery's second novel Night Flight, a fragrant story of love and romance of the first years of aviation. Shalimar is a tribute to the legendary love story between Emperor Shahjahan and his wife Mumtaz Mahal. Mitsouko was inspired by the heroine of Claude Farrère's novel La bataille, a story of an impossible love between Mitsouko, the wife of Japanese Admiral Togo, and a British officer. The story takes place in 1905, during the war between Russia and Japan. Jacques Guerlain died on 2 May 1963, aged 88, in Paris. Link to Wikipedia biography