Guerlain president and CEO Gabrielle Saint-Genis on the value of taking time

The Guerlain range of products is so extensive—is there a challenge in being able to convey that much to a customer?

Indeed, when you are 200 years old, you have almost too many products. So, we permanently review the catalogue to try to contain it. Yet, we are probably the biggest fragrance portfolio in the world. We have more than 200 fragrances. Can you imagine that? It's a big investment to maintain 200 fragrances, in particular, with the regulations today in Asia, Europe, US and Canada, they are becoming more and more complex. It's really a choice to maintain the amount of fragrances that we do. But we want to maintain that choice for our customers.

Can you tell us about your new fragrance launch, L’Heure Bleue?

We really took our time. It has been ten years since we launched a women’s fragrance. We wanted a real creation and not a me-too of what's happening on the market. It took us a long time, first of all, to create the fragrance itself with Delphine Jelk, our fragrance creation director. We've been working for three years on it with Delphine, over 2,000 trials. At Guerlain, we create in-house, so we have the time, the possibility, the luxury to try again and again and again.

And we literally live with the creation for three years. This is really a breakthrough formula. It's really never been smelled on the market. It expresses this very fresh, airy, clean scent of the sky. Then we've been very demanding with the bottle; it’s a completely new, reshaped bottle. And this blue, with the gradient, it took us one year with a very famous glassmaker to obtain that. It was very difficult to get the perfect gradient, and the perfect blue as well, to be feminine and not too manly.

I could also speak to you about the natural ingredients that are inside, that we are sourcing ourselves at Guerlain. We source, we supply, and we transform in our factory next to Paris, in Orphin, 100 per cent of what we produce. We source the vanilla, we source the iris. And for this fragrance, we invented the iris tincture.

It's a well-hidden, well-kept secret for Guerlain. But the principle of it is that once we get the iris, which is a very expensive raw material, it takes a lot of time. We've invented a way to have an iris that is less powdery, by mixing it, by putting it into alcohol. This is what we call a tincture.

It has a more creamy, light scent. And it took us three years to develop that iris tincture.

Beyond the technicalities, what do you feel is so special about the fragrance?

It’s a story of a connection with nature. We've been talking with lots of women to understand what their deep desires really are. And we felt all of the women expressed this kind of mental charge. We’re working, we are managing a lot of things with family, parents, kids. The women we spoke to expressed this need to recharge their battery. Calm down, stop, breathe, have a moment for themselves.

And this blue hour is a suspended moment in time. It is this very special moment where the sun has disappeared. But the sky hasn't found its first star yet, so there is still light. And there is a kind of blue colour completely invading the landscape. It’s so beautiful, and the birds stop singing, the flowers exhale their most beautiful fragrance. It’s a moment where you can reconnect with yourself. Because in a way, time stops.

In the time between this launch and the last fragrance launch, have you observed much change in how consumers behave?

One of the big changes versus 10 years ago is how fragrances have been rediscovered, especially in Asia. We know that COVID accelerated that trend; being connected to candles, home fragrances, or fragrances for yourself, because you needed to pamper yourself. And to recharge your mind.

And Gen-Z, Gen Alpha, they love fragrances. Because it’s a way for them to differentiate from their neighbours. And to express their own personality. So they started really using fragrance for themselves, to express themselves, or even the mood of the day. I’m really truly amazed by the level of expertise of the key opinion experts that you can see on social media today. And that’s in every country in the world. They were not really there 10 years ago. And I love it. We learn a lot with them as well. They know about our material. They know about the history of the brands. They know about the perfumers. They can do one of the toughest things in the world, which is blind discovery. I've been working in the beauty industry for 30 years, and sometimes you can smell a very famous fragrance blind and still not recognise it, even if you are a super expert. So they're really experts. And that pushes us to really continue to bring more and more quality in all our creations.

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