Nahéma (1979)
by Guerlain

Nahéma is often spoken of as a rose soliflore, but I think of it more as a spicy, fruity floral-oriental that’s just stronger on the rose than most. While Nahéma’s heart contains plenty of rose, there’s just as much peach and cinnamon in the blend, plus plenty of Guerlain’s trademark vanilla securing the foundation.

The powdery peach note aligns Nahéma with both Mitsouko and Chant d’Aromes within the Guerlain constellation. In depth and weight it lies somewhere between the two – lighter than Mitsouko, but more dense than Chant d’Aromes. With its vanillic basenotes, it also happens to be sweeter than either. The smoky vanilla and cinnamon meanwhile bear relation to Shalimar, though abundant aldehydes carry Nahéma far from its elder sister’s dark viscosity. Among contemporary scents, Nahéma also stands comparison with Amouage’s recent Lyric and Lyric for Men, which are likewise centered on spiced fruit and rose. Lacking the dark woods and incense of either Amouage, however, Nahéma is a far softer, fresher, and more buoyant fragrance.

With its aldehydes, powder, and sweet fruit, Nahéma strikes me as less comfortably unisex than Shalimar or L’Heure Bleue, and far less so than the very gender neutral Vol de Nuit and Mitsouko. Lacking the crisp, refreshing green notes of Chamade and Chant d’Aromes, Nahéma also reads to me as the most unabashedly romantic of the modern Guerlain florals. Nahéma is potent stuff, radiating its larger-than-life rose and fruit for miles from the skin in its parfum concentration, and leaving great clouds of sillage behind it. If you’re going to wear Nahéma, you’d better really like it, because everyone in the vicinity is going to know it’s there.

Viewed in historical perspective, Nahéma’s central rose and fruit accord could be taken as a precursor of the fruity floral tidal wave that’s swamped women’s perfumes for the last couple of decades. To blame Guerlain would be unfair, however. Nahéma has never been popular or well recognized enough to spur a mass market trend, and where Nahéma is characteristically elegant, poised and beautifully balanced, the degenerate mob that has followed is invariably crude, awkward, and marred by grossly inferior ingredients. It’s a credit to Nahéma’s composition that the ongoing run of gawky fruity florals has not debased it in the slightest.

I'm not smelling the magic here. For the vast majority of its development, Nahema reminds me of some some musty rose oil heavily diluted in vegetable oil. It is not strange per se, but it's a smell I expect from a "fragrance oil" rack at a drug-store and not from a Guerlain classic. In addition to this rose accord, I smell an artificial-smelling vanilla and peach, and something almost akin to sunscreen.

It doesn't smell like any fruity-floral fragrance I've smelled, but as much as I'm not a fan of the category, most of them smell quite a bit nicer than this. At least they usually have a little life and vibrancy, quite unlike this sad, dull juice.

As most makers of potpourri know, one of the best, least expensive ways to achieve a rose scent is to use crushed or bruised rose geranium leaves. And that is precisely what I detect in Nahema. Nothing extraodinary, nothing exotic...just the leaves of this widely grown herb. Having said that, I can only recommend Nahema to scent your home. Once again, I am truly disappointed in Guerlain. This house is in great need of something beautiful or at least something interesting. In the past 25 years, Chanel may have given us Allure (ugh), but Chanel also gave us Cristalle, Coco and the reissue of many of their great, classic scents. Guerlain has given us Samsara (the last incarnation of this used cheap sandalwood which smells unpleasant) and Insolence (cute, but not great). May I take back my Basenotes vote for best perfume house?

Guerlain Nahema

A rose is a rose is a rose so sayeth Gertrude Stein. When it comes to perfume that is not true there are many roses out there and not all of them are created equal. Then there are the roses that seem like mythical flowers that seem to have no imitators and no equal. Jean-Paul Guerlain's 1979 creation for Guerlain, Nahema, is arguably the greatest rose scent ever made. According to Luca Turin in Perfumes The Guide this was done without using any actual rose oil. Instead this is perfumers sleight of hand, in other words magic. There are only a few scents that have made me have to wear them multiple time before I feel properly equipped to talk about them. I think the scientist in me believed that I would be able to tease the individual components out the more I wore Nahema to see how rose could be created without rose, I can't. Therefore like the greatest magic acts I finaly admit defeat and just sit back and let the illusion happen because its spectacular. Nahema starts with a heady blast of rose and what I find so interesting is the rose seems to change character a number of times throughout the development on my skin first it seems to be a tea rose, then a bulgarie-like rose, then something else as my head spins trying to follow the bouncing rose until I just let it wash over me. The rose is eventually joined by a lush peach note. This is a peach that is so full and round it would burst if it fell off the tree. This lush peach is perfect and properly defines this as a fruity floral but if you're comparing it to the hundreds of fruity florals that are out there, please stop. That is like comparing a Bentley to a SmartCar. Nahema uses the interplay of both notes to create a symphony and while this is a fruity floral it is in no way over-the-top sweet like so many in the class. As Nahema finally settles into its base a mix of vanilla and sandalwood show up and bring this to a soothing slightly sweet woody close. Nahema has great longevity and sillage. Nahema is one of those benchmark scents; it is an astonishing example of a rose scent, it is an astonishing example of a fruity floral and finally it is just plain astonishing.

Knowing this was based on rose, I had never intended to try it. However, a fellow Basenoter was generous enough to send me one of those tiny Nahema minis with the blue top. I'm not a fan of florals, especially when it comes to rose scents and I'm also not a fan of fruity florals, of which Nehama is said to be the first. So the mystery to me is why I like this so much when it opens like a big, sparkling, fruity rose. This is a strange scent, so I can't begin to articulate how it unfolds. All I can say is that as the scent quites down there is almost a Caron-like darkness that starts to unfold and begins to nestle the rose inside. At this point it brings to mind Caron's Fleurs de Rocaille, but Nahema has it's own amazing thing going and by the time you get to the gorgeous drydown it's hard to believe that the scent started out the way the way it did. This scent should be experienced even if you are not a fan of florals or fruity-florals in general.

I have mixed feelings about Nahema. I sometimes like it, but I sometimes cannot get past the waxy melted crayon smell. I could almost give a hesitant thumbs up (a slanted thumb, perhaps?) because, well....I rather like the smell of crayons! : ) However, I'm not sure I want my wrists to smell like rose-scented crayons. It's a tough call. There isn't anything offensive or daring about the perfume (therefore some would find this a complete thumbs down because of being 'boring' or not unique enough or something), but I have to agree with those who have said it is shallow in comparison with the likes of Joy, which is just...well...joyful!