Some people collect stamps or vintage coins. Me? I have a perfume museum in my New York City apartment. With well over 200 scents to my name, I’ve developed quite the discerning nose during my decade as a beauty editor. Of course, I have my personal preferences: gourmands and citrus scents are my go-tos. But I’ve also learned to appreciate a well-crafted oud or floral blend. Through my spritzing and spraying, I’ve come to the conclusion that when I want to smell expensive, Guerlain is the clear frontrunner.
Every single fragrance from the brand has a secret sauce, if you will. Called Guerlainade, it blends vanilla, bergamot, tonka bean, iris, rose, and jasmine. In some scents, like the iconic Shalimar, it's very noticeable. But in others, like the new Les Eaux Collection, it’s only detectable if you know what you’re looking for. The nice part about this intentional throughline, though, is that it allows all the Guerlain scents to play nicely together. Because let’s be honest, no one has the self-restraint to wear just one perfume at a time. “Combine fragrance. Apply one to your pulse points, another to your hair, and an all-over scent; perhaps something behind the knees as well,” Guerlain perfumer Delphine Jelk tells me.
While everyone’s olfactory personality of choice is going to be different, I’m sharing some of the standout scents in my collection ahead.
The Extraits
Brace yourself for the price point, but this new (ish) collection from the brand is truly something special. These scents have staying power I’ve never experienced (I still smell them on my skin almost 36 hours later) and contain a 30 percent concentration of Guerlanaide, the highest across the entire fragrance profile. One to two sprays is plenty.
If I had a signature scent, it’s this. I wear it pretty much every single day, and 90 percent of my clothes smell like it, too. It’s such an intoxicating, yummy vanilla that smells more grounded and boozy than sweet. If you need help justifying the price, one bottle lasts me over two years.
If you’re searching for a powdery, dry, woody scent that you can wear all summer, this is the one for you. It’s balanced out with a white suede and a little leather, which gives it a depth that you typically don’t find with iris.
The Eau de Parfums
The L’Art and La Matiére collection is the biggest grouping from the house, containing 22 unique scents with a focus on amber, fresh, woody, and floral fragrance families. It’s hard to narrow it down to just my top two, but these babies are truly so unique, and I never get less than three compliments when I wear them.
My favorite combo is Vanille Planifolia on my pulse points and Double Vanille on my clothes. The latter is richer and darker than the extrait, largely because it has a heavy presence of rum, cedarwood, and amber.
I promise you’ve never smelled anything quite like Pêche Mirage. It’s fruity with a leather twist, but, frankly, the smell just reminds me of drinking an Aperol Spritz on a picturesque street in Paris.
The Eaux Collection
Inspired by a range of textiles and fabrics like cotton and tulle for lingerie, this collection falls on the more affordable end of Guerlain’s spectrum. Every item is an eau de toilette, and while that normally means the fragrance is less powerful, that is not the case with these. Instead, they carry the same oil content as the regular eau de parfum collection, but with a lighter, more summer-y aura.
If I had to guess, this is going to be my go-to scent for summer. It’s light and fresh—almost like fresh laundry that’s been air drying in the sun. It’s subtle, so you really only smell it if you’re up close and personal.
While I think of Guerlain primarily as a fragrance house that creates powerful, weighty scents, this perfume is proof that they can create a skin scent, too. This particular blend is creamy and soothing thanks to white musk.
The Allegoria Scents
There are four families under the Allegoria umbrella: Aqua Allegoria Perle (the Guerlain version of a hair and body mist), Aqua Allegoria (a lightweight fragrance), Aqua Allegoria Intense (a long-lasting perfume), and Absolus Allegoria (think: beast-mode perfume). The common thread is that they’re all inspired by the wonders of the world—dawn, dusk, a rainbow—and housed in the most stunning, gold-emblazoned flankers.
While I’m personally very into neroli, all three fragrances in the Aqua Allegoria Perle family share the same identifying traits: they’re half-scent, half-skincare compositions. Each spray contains hydrating micro-pearls (you get a slight shimmer wherever you spray) and alcohol-free, which is ideal if you’re using it as a hair mist so as to not dry out your strands.
This mandarin and basil blend is quite literally summer in a bottle. You’re also able to personalize the bottle, which makes this a great gift for bridal showers, birthdays, and anniversaries.
The Shalimar Secret
Shalimar is the brand’s original claim to fame. It launched (for the first time) in 1925, and since then, it’s been reinvented numerous times, most recently for the 100th anniversary, when Jelk created a more modern, more vanilla-forward, less animalistic version of the scent. That said, there are nearly a dozen different versions and concentrations to choose from.
My 85-year-old grandmother wore the original Shalimar for years, so there’s a sentimental factor there. But since the newest edition came out, we’ve both been wearing it. It’s a true amber vanilla and the bottle is genuinely stunning.
For my fragrance collectors: get this while you can. The limited-edition rose-infused Shalimar is such a beautiful creation. And while it’s stunning to wear, I have my eye on it just so I can stare at it sitting in my collection at home. Whoever said looks don't matter never caught sight of this perfume bottle.
Why Trust Marie Claire
For more than 30 years, Marie Claire has been an internationally recognized destination for news, fashion and beauty trends, investigative packages, and more. When it comes to the products Marie Claire recommends, we take your faith in us seriously. Every product that we feature comes personally recommended by a Marie Claire writer or editor, or by an expert we’ve spoken to firsthand.
