Note Pyramid
L'Homme Ideal
Everything else in the family came afterwards, and Guerlain L'Homme Ideal Eau de Toilette is the 2014 original that the rest of them are variations on.
It opens bright and bitter. Bitter orange and orange blossom arrive together, one sharp and peely, the other clean and faintly honeyed, with rosemary cutting across them to add a herbal, slightly resinous edge. It is a genuinely fresh start and it lasts about fifteen minutes.
Then the almond appears, which is the moment the fragrance becomes itself. Here it has a soft, chewy sweetness, nothing like a syrup, and tonka bean deepens it with a warmth that carries a faint bitterness underneath. The base then dries everything out. Leather gives a smooth, worn in quality, cedarwood a sharpened dryness and vetiver a rooty coolness, and between them they stop the almond from reading as a pudding. That balance between the sweet middle and the dry floor is the reason this fragrance sold as well as it did.
Thierry Wasser composed it. As an eau de toilette it is the lightest and most wearable of the family, four to six hours with a modest trail, which makes it the one for daytime, for the office and for warmer weather where the heavier versions become hard work. It is marketed to men and it is a safe, well judged choice for one, which is presumably why it has stayed in the range so long.
The Paris house behind it started up in 1828 and is LVMH owned. This is a long way from the house's early work, when its founder was supplying cologne for an imperial wedding in 1853, but the taste for almond and powder runs right through both ends of the catalogue.
Please note: images are a guide only. Packaging and bottle design may occasionally differ from those shown due to manufacturer updates or promotions.
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