At 100 Years Old, Guerlain Shalimar Is Still The Blueprint

Cult Status is TZR’s series that highlights an iconic item from brands both established and buzz-worthy. In these features, you'll discover the fascinating history of how one extra-special piece exceeded expectations and became a forever product. This time, the focus is on Guerlain Shalimar Eau de Parfum.

The love between Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and his wife Mumtaz Mahal famously inspired the Taj Mahal in India, which remains an enduring symbol of love and devotion. And if you’re a perfume fanatic, there’s another equally important wonder of the world that this love story gave birth to centuries later: perfumer Jacques Guerlain was so moved by this 17th-century romance that he created Guerlain’s Shalimar Eau de Parfum in tribute.

The best known of the French perfume house’s scents, Shalimar has turned a hundred. An icon of the jazz age, it reached that milestone this year, adding another feather to its already well-festooned crown.

Ahead, TZR explores exactly what makes Shalimar the pinnacle of perfumery, how it became a household name across the world, and explores its newly-launched iteration.

The Making Of An Icon

Considered radical when it was composed by Jacques in 1925, Shalimar was the first amber scent ever formulated, launching a perfume family that’s still major today. It was also the first to use the synthetic molecule ethylvanillin, bestowing Shalimar with a hefty shot of vanilla, which would have otherwise been impossible considering the rarity and cost of real vanilla at the time.

After its release, Shalimar was quick to earn commercial and critical acclaim. Ernest Beaux, the perfumer of Chanel No. 5, supposedly said, "When I do vanilla, I get crème anglaise; when Guerlain does it, he gets Shalimar!" In historian Michael Edwards’ scent encyclopedia Perfume Legends II, the compliment reads a little different but the theme is the same. Edwards writes, “One of the nicest compliments came from Ernest Beaux, the creator of N° 5 (1921): ‘With the ton of vanillin there is in there, I could barely have made a sorbet. Guerlain, he made a marvel!’ ” Edwards attributed that quote to a lecture Omer Arif, Beaux’s assistant, gave to the Société Française des Parfumeurs titled Hommage à Ernest Beaux.

The perfume’s bottle is a paean to the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements while tipping its hat to its Mughal inspiration. The flaçon’s sinuous, arabesque curves unfurl above a pedestal, and it’s crowned by a distinctive sapphire crystal tinted blue by Maison Baccarat. The pedestal? Also a design innovation and a historic first on perfume bottles.

Shalimar’s juice wrote the blueprint for Guerlinade, Guerlain’s famous quintessence of bergamot, rose, jasmine, iris, vanilla, and tonka bean, which is a power base that goes into many of the house’s fragrances even today. It was far removed from the demure perfumes of the time that were designed to be unobtrusive so that no one could be enamored by the silage of a woman except her husband. Shalimar was not for obedient women, it was the olfactory signifier of a time when hemlines went up and corsets came off. One legend of the time went that, “A good girl never dances the tango, smokes, or wears Shalimar.” More compelling inadvertent advertising has yet to be created.

Shalimar was a hit as soon as it was unveiled at the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts held in Paris in 1925. This pivotal exhibition set the ground for Art Deco; so foundational was it that the artistic movement literally mirrors its name. As the fragrance took over the continent, at the end of World War II, American GIs lined up outside the Guerlain store in Paris to obtain this little bottle of history to carry back as a souvenir for their sweethearts in America.

Shalimar officially made its way to this side of the Atlantic that same year, when Jacques’ grandson Raymond Guerlain, the designer of the Shalimar bottle, traveled to America with his wife Lily, to open the house’s first boutique on Madison Avenue. Lily’s sillage entranced the cruise liner’s other seafarers who kept asking her what scent she was wearing. Shalimar became an immediate success in the U.S. and Andy Warhol, Rita Hayworth, and Frida Kahlo famously became fans.

Even today, Shalimar and Guerlain are irrevocably entwined. “Sometimes, when I wear Shalimar, people stop me and say, ‘You smell so good. You smell [like] Guerlain. I don't know which one, but it’s Guerlain.’” says Ann-Caroline Prazan, Guerlain's head of art, culture, and patrimony.

In chronological age, Shalimar has more seniority than some of perfumery’s old masters, but it is paradoxically one of the most wearable even now. It doesn’t come off as heavily baroque or completely at odds to what perfume lovers look for today. It’s of another time, for sure, with the iris giving a powdery, almost dusty undertone; still, it’s fresh, thanks to its composition of 30% bergamot that lingers through much of its life. It doesn’t feel weighty or heavy, but it has gravitas and demands the same of its wearer. It’s strong but delicate — it has a significant sillage, yet creates an enveloping cocoon of intimacy around the wearer. This is not a scent that will chase you down the street, but might compel others to do the chasing if they catch a whiff. More than anything, it’s impossibly well-balanced. None of its powerful ingredients, even though they are used in hefty quantities, outdo the other.

Shalimar For A New Age

Guerlain, with its centuries of mastery over the perfumery market, understands that everyone doesn’t have the same appreciation for grande-dame scents the way lovers of Shalimar do. To celebrate the centennial and to bring the fragrance to a new generation, it has launched a version for now. Delphine Jelk, Guerlain’s master perfumer and creative director of fragrance, composed Shalimar L’Essence, concentrating and distilling the vitality of the original through the lens of 2025.

Jelk is probably one of the most- and least-envied people in perfumery today. From her perch in Guerlain’s rich archives, she gets to steer the helm of a house that literally wrote the code of modern perfumery. Less enviably, she has to go deep into the vaults to reimagine and remake perfumes that have not only been household names for generations, but are also the juices that the industry considers the pinnacle of achievement; the archetypes against which all others are compared. Messing with them is sacrilegious, to many well-regarded experts.

What is a perfumer to do?

Jelk, surprisingly, wears this privilege and responsibility lightly. “It's like a game. I feel a bit mischievous when I go inside [a fragrance] and see what's in there and try to understand what Jacques Guerlain did.”

The awe for her position at this grand house is deeply held (“Anytime I work around an iconic fragrance — and there are many at Guerlain — I feel very humble”), but she manages to bury it and doesn’t allow that deference to paralyze her vision. “I want to create for us, for you, for me, for all the girls. And it's really very important for me to be — we call it ‘l'air du temp’ in French — ‘in the now.’” Earlier this year, she reimagined the peach accord in another archival marvel, Mitsouko, and introduced Pêche Mirage as a contemporary tribute.

As a centenarian, Shalimar, she says, “is a monument, it's really amazing.” She wanted L'Essence to retain its soul. “I wanted to do a Shalimar, just a Shalimar of 2025,” she adds. What really moved her, when she immersed herself in the fragrance, was its intimacy. “Even if it's very intense and powerful, it's much more a cuddle fragrance, it’s very enveloping, emotional and intimate.” That discovery helped her bring a personal gaze to her remix. “I am a woman, so I see it my way with my feminine side. And what I really love in Shalimar is the vanilla. It represents to me the arms of your mother. And I'm really into that,” she says. At the same time, Jelk also wanted to highlight the sensuality of the predecessor. “And so, it's the love perfume. For me, that's perfection — a love perfume that progresses from childhood and mother to lover. It's really all the love feelings you can have through your life,” she says.

Jelk shot straight for the heart of Shalimar and let the rest recede into the background. While Jacques’ use of ethylvanillin made Shalimar unique for its time, the large quantity at which it was used was also what packed the punch. The dose, as they say, makes the poison. “But today, when we smell Shalimar the original, it's not so much vanilla,” observes Jelk. “Now we like more vanilla than that, and we can really afford more than that. And so, it really amused me to overdose on the vanilla.” She’s mirroring Jacques’ creative intention of making Shalimar vanilla-forward, just in a different proportion and to speak the language of today.

The amber accord is a Guerlain signature, with benzoin, cistus, incense, vanilla, patchouli, opoponax, and iris. “This is Guerlain’s special amber recipe that I love and use often,” Jelk says. “It has a very smoky quality, almost like a lapsang souchong tea note, which is very important in Shalimar, to bring the sensuality and depth to the fragrance.”

While she kept the rose, jasmine, and iris notes, that fizzy bergamot opening wasn’t so important to her; “that makes it vintage to me.” So, bergamot, while present, doesn’t jump out. Next in line to be tweaked was the animalic, sexy, dirty dry down. “You have to realize that perfumery trends are linked to the palette available to the perfumer at the time. Today, I have in my palette much more ingredients than Jacques Guerlain had at the time,” she says. To express sensuality in a new way, she swapped out the dirty, animalic notes she thinks we don't want anymore and used musks instead, a family she’s particularly fond of, to make it contemporary.

And she’s done that. Shalimar L’Essence is a vanilla fragrance for younger generations without being generic or juvenile. It’s got strength, a sweetness that never goes saccharine, and sends out flares of that Guerlain-esque quintessence.

A Vanilla Like No Other

In Guerlain, Jelk has found her spiritual home. She sees her mission as reinterpreting the style of the house, and as luck would have it, that style overlaps greatly with ingredients she loves, and gravitates toward. “All the ingredients of Guerlinade, especially rose, vanilla, iris, and tonka bean, those are really my things.” Vanilla, in particular, has been a constant companion on her journey. “Vanilla has been part of my style since the beginning, and it's also because I think I love emotional perfumery,” she says.

And nowhere is vanilla as revered as it is at Guerlain. The maison uses organic Madagascar vanilla beans that are hand-pollinated, cut with the very knife Jacques used, and macerated in alcohol and aged like cognac for 21 days to create a tincture that’s not sweet and cloyingly cake-like the way many commercial vanillas are. This is a faceted, complex, spicy, woody, intimate soup that makes its way into those collectible bottles. “Guerlain has to create the most beautiful vanilla in the world. It's not a trend at Guerlain. It's part of the DNA,” Jelk says.

Vanilla, of course, has been enjoying worldwide domination for a few years, but that’s besides the point. “We focus on our expertise, which is fragrances. We don't want to be in fashion and don't care about trends,” says Prazan. “Vanilla is one of the most important ingredients of the Guerlinade. All of the Guerlain family was totally addicted to vanilla,” she adds. It seems fitting that they found their perfumer in Jelk, and she created for them a vanilla-centric Shalimar successor that is worthy of that cobalt crystal crown.