Reviews of 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!

This is a review of the parfum: As many point out Nahema presents a rose while containing no rose oil, and that's perhaps why it's so good. The opening is a deep, rich, honeyed rose supported by vanilla and subtle peach notes. Rose stays front and center throughout while the supporting notes behind it change. Once the force of the honeyed sweetness subsides subtle green (hyacinth) notes emerge, eventually being joined by light woody notes.

Nahema is a massive, bold fragrance. I find it interesting that Guerlain created a rose-centered oriental in 1979 after creating a rose-centered chypre in Parure in 1974. Both are bold rose scents, tops in their respective genres.

In parfum sillage and longevity are absurd, but the EdT and EdP are both very good as well. As you go up in concentration Nahema becomes thicker and denser, but all are equally wonderful.

The first perfume I ever fell in love with. I know this one is supposed to be all about the rose, but rose isn't the first thing I think of when I smell it. The top has a lovely, fresh greenness, like lily-of-the-valley. This part is beautiful, but what kills me is the second act, where it all of a sudden turns into naughty, musky little peach. Sex, sex, and sex.

*This review is for current formulation extrait*

Nahema is often referred to as Guerlain's big rose. Indeed, it currently is Guerlain's rose fragrance but there have been other such as Guerlarose (1930). It is also said not to contain any rose notes. I'm not sure, but it does contain damascones which supposedly support any true rose notes that are present.

The damascones make for a very vibrant and slightly un-guerlainlike opening. They quickly settle on the skin however to give way to a restrained fruity note that is briefly reminiscent of Mitsouko and that gives off very little warmth. It actually reminds me more of cookie dough. In feeling, it also reminds me of Creed Virgin Island Water, which makes me think I finally 'got' the ylang-ylang note that's lurking in both frags.

As the frag develops, more and more of the rose/peach qualities give way to the foody/woody base of this fragrance. The progression is very enjoyable and Nahema is the first to use the damascones but imho this fragrance has been somewhat rendered irrelevant to modern wearing due to other rose fragrance, most notably Une Rose by Frederic Malle, being much better. Still, thumbs up for a good fragrance and an distinctive piece of perfume history.

Guerlain Nahema parfum vs. Guerlain Nahema EDP

Nahema is supposedly a rose solifore fragrance that has no rose notes. It is with a combination of carefully selected ingredients that the olfactory image of a rose is reconstructed. Now that I think of it, that is probably the best way to do it--real rose absolute does not smell like a fresh rose blossom, nor do most of the synthetics I have smelled. I am sure this approach is used one way or another with any scent composition which attempts to mimic a natural scent that is difficult to capture directly from the source.

When I applied Nahema parfum (with a dabber sample), I smelled rose blossom immediately. The scent at first was somewhere between a tea rose and a damask rose--light and delicate, not terribly boozy, and only a bit spicy. As the fragrance rapidly developed, the interplay of notes seemed to change. I could still imagine rose when I smelled it, but the accord seemed much more fruity and tropical, with a touch of citrus. I do not know what the notes actually are, but I smelled cherry, almond, ylang and a lemony rosewood or citronella. The rosewood is the one ingredient which tended to destroy the rose imagery for me, but I only caught whiffs of it now and then. The most pervasive notes were the cherry and almond, and the two together gave a seemingly contradictory sweet, tart and bitter bite to the fragrance. The sharpness eventually softened in the drydown, although I still smelled cherry rather prominently. There appeared to be some sweet resins in the base, probably benzoin and perhaps a touch of vanilla, woods, some powder and very small amount of spice. There was also a waxyness in the parfum drydown, probably either from aldehydes or as part of the resinous base accord.

When I applied Nahema edp (also with a dabber sample), I did not smell rose right away. It was more of a warm, nutty scent, somewhat vegetal and a bit resinous. It was earthy without evoking dirt, smooth and rounded, and not floral at all. Once this top note started to fade, the rose emerged, and seemed to be exactly the same accord that is in the parfum. Whereas the rose accord in the parfum opened up, it stayed more compressed in the edp. I actually think this compressed effect is a better for preserving the overall rose impression. The use of the rose accord in the edp seemed softer, more homogeneous, and more minimalist. It is billowy and cushiony, more fleeting, and much less penetrating than the parfum. In this sense, it continued to give me an impression of a rose rather than reverting into its various component notes as it did in the parfum. There was a bit of the sharp cherry-almond edge in the edp, but it was much less prominent, keeping the fragrance from turning into a tropical fruit and flower melange. The soft and rounded theme continued into the drydown, and as the cherry and almond faded, resins, mellow wood and a very faint spice remained. The edp was not as powdery as the parfum, although neither was particularly strong in that note. Where the parfum was very waxy at this stage, the edp had less waxyness and seemed more woody--there was a wet cardboard effect that I caught once or twice.

Overall, I can see how Nahema is a fragrance worthy of acclaim. For any fragrance enthusiast who is hungry for a conceptual "fragrance experience", Nahema is a must-try. Like most conceptual works, however, I find myself wondering how wearable this fragrance is. There is certainly nothing offputting about it, and it is not really trying to push too many boundaries in terms of what women's fragrances have traditionally tended toward. I love the idea that the central rose accord was completely synthesized from other ingredients. But...would I love to own a full bottle, and would I wear it often? For me, the answer is probably not. Not at this moment, anyway. Of the two concentrations, I prefer the edp for is softness, and also because the rosewood and waxy notes are less prominent. Both developed very quickly, over the period of about one to two hours. Sillage seemed low to medium, with the perfume having a bit more projection. The cherry and almond in Nahema evoke other cherry-almond fragrances such as Dior Hypnotic Poison and Serge Lutens Datura Noir. However, Nahema captures a subtlety which is lacking in the Dior or Lutens. I noticed the same subtlety in Malle's L'Eau d'Hiver, another conceptual almond fragrance which must certainly pay homage to Nahema.

Nahema is beyond gorgeous. In my fragrance world, it sits well above 5 stars in a sort of supranatural heavenly position from where it looks down on the rest of the fragrance world with curious contentment. No floral will ever surpass Nahema for the excellent manner in which is presents a rose....It is the richest, warmest, most luxurious representation of roses that was ever created. You can practically eat it off your skin it is so rich -- the combination of fragrant ripe peach and deep rose, as well as other notes, creates a sumptuous representation that is beyond all other rose fragrances. The sillage is medium-strong, depending on how it's applied, and the lasting power is very good. This wonderful, magnificent rose can be worn judiciously for day, but truly positions itself for the most memorable occasions, the most sophisticated occasions. This could most definitely be a signature fragrance for those who want to wear it every day. (I do believe, as with all Guerlain masterpieces it should definitely be tested before purchasing. As with Mitsouko or Vol de Nuit, etc., Nahema is not for everyone's chemistry. I feel fortunate that is works with my chemistry so well.)

Clean rose with peach, not muddy like most peach/rose combos. Reminds me a bit of Arpege, actually, with that slightly tarry aldehyde scent. This has a Lemony edge. It's very nice, but while not precisely dated, it's not something I’d wear. Perhaps there's too much peach in it for my taste.

Nahema is a classic. Hard to believe it comes out of the 1970's instead of the 20's. It's so complex and was created for a complex woman, never meant to be a big showy "Floral" --I can't take the big matronly florals that brag about how MUCH floral is packed into the scent--those remind me of a big lady in a big fur coat. This is truly a warm, sexy scent that is just sweet enough, gentle, and oh so tender. I'd recommend the pure parfum.

I was fortunate to be able to obtain a small bottle of the Nahema EDP on eBay, but just didn't warm to it, mostly because of the fruity note, so set it aside as "not me". Now, retrying it several months later, I love it! Perhaps it's the change in season, but the fruit note is now terrific to my nose. Calling it "peachy rose" comes close, but didn't describe it quite precisely enough; in fact, it reminded me of something familiar, so I went out into my garden to pick some of our rose geranium and -- voila! -- that's it! I have been searching for a rose fragrance forever, but most, if not all, are too sweet, turning nauseating after a while. Nahema's rose is perfectly blended with this rosy green geranium note and the wood and the vanilla support it beautifully to the very end. It really is something unique and I'm going to enjoy wearing it a lot.

"Big rose" is very appropriate. The huge, voluminous powdery aspect dominates for the first couple of hours. I prefer it after this aspect settles down. The tonka/vanillic drydown is very nice. I'm just not the kind of person who likes having to wait for two hours before something starts smelling good.

I remember wearing Nahéma twenty or so years ago and was interested to try it again now that I know a bit more about perfume. It is nice enough fragrance that smells like roses, powder and honey but to be honest, I am not as crazy about it as I once was. Nahéma just seems so one-dimensional and is a poor relation to the likes of Joy. It is nothing compared to a floral masterpieces of today such as Serge Lutens’ Un Lys, or Editions Frederic Malle’s Lys Mediterranee or Carnal Flower. In short, Nahéma’s time is unfortunately past.

Truly one of Guerlain's best offerings in the last thirty years.

Few hyacinth frags move me much, as do few frags with strong peach notes. Nahéma has enough woody notes and rose to settle these two elements down, though -- to civilize them and to keep them from becoming cloying. Marvelous chameleon of a drydown, with a stunning use of balsam and tonka bean.

A rose by any other name—would not be Guerlain. Nahema took me by surprise. It was described as a “big” rose, so I automatically expected a big, sweet, wet rose, dripping with honey and fruitiness, but it wasn't.
Nahema is powdery. But sweet? Not immediately. To be sure, there are vanilla and tonka lurking in the base, waiting to sweeten the fragrance as time goes by, but these are usually clear notes, and the overall effect of Nahema is of a “gauzy” rose, out of focus, covered under a veil of semi-transperancy.
For quite some time, Nahema is surprisingly woody. Imagine that! A woody, powdery peach; a dusty rose. The rose never presents itself apart form the peach, it is a constantly peachy rose. My daughter commented that it reminds her of peach incense. This is the dry aspect of Nahema. (It it is not the least bit smoky.)
And it is persistent. Here is where Nahema earns its “big” rose reputation. Once the powdery, peachy rose establishes itself, there is no turning back. No other notes overtake this accord. It remains strong and true to itself until the last petals fall away.
It has the "green" sweetness provided by Guerlain's hyacinth note, which I love. (I smelled this next to a live hyacinth in bloom, and it captures that wild, springlike freshness in both Chamade and Nahema.)
Nahema is like an old-fashioned box of ladies’ face powder—the loose, peach/flesh colored powder with the aroma of cosmetics. Imagine a well-dressed woman standing at a department store cosmetics counter, surrounded by mirrors. She opens a box and applies her powder, using a fluffy powder puff. A little haze of dust arises around her face. Then she shuts the box too quickly and, “poof!” A small cloud of powder explodes and settles slowly. That is Nahema to me.
When the powder is gone, there remains the most tender, peach gummy bear candy—or a soft little piece of rose flavored loukoum. Oh! Guerlain peach. Oh!

I've come to like this very much. I'm too delicate looking to pull off a full-blow oriental without coming across like Thumbelina wanting to be Verushka. :)

The note top notes are indeed voluminous, but I must say not cheap-smelling. The delight of this scent is the warm, luscious dry-down, indeed Mata Hari like- but regular-cat size, not a snarling panther :)

This has been my favorite sexy dress-up scent forever -- one I keep coming back to. To the previous comments, I would only add that you really need a fresh bottle to get the full complexity -- too bad it's so hard to come by.

One of the most beautiful rose fragrances, ever. It makes a symphony from the scent of roses, juicy peahces, and incredible, clear balsam. Nahema possesses the mysterious beauty of a Victorian mansion, elegant, ornate, and haunted.

I am pleasantly surprised, I really liked Nahema. Usually any perfume with floral aldehydes doesn't work for me. This is one of the only Rose perfumes I have really liked. With my chemistry I smell just Rose, hyacinth & maybe a bit of peach & victorian rose. Beautiful. A scent that you need to dress up for IMO. I will wear this with a wide brimmed hat and a feminine flowing dress.

Nahema is the most incredible delight! Fuller note description-

Hyacinth, ylang ylang

Rose, peach

Vanilla, tonka bean, balsam

The rose does predominate, but shares a lot of spotlight with peach and hyacinth. No one could ever dismiss this rich beauty as "another rose
fragrance." There's just too much going on.

This is the farthest one can get from transparent
without screaming oriental. The dry down is warm
and rich and sexy in a Matahara kind of way. Tonka bean gives a soft, powdery hint. The balsam in the base maintains a bit of edge, so even if the eyes are half closed this one is ready
to strike.

On first sniff, I was put off. But this scent grew on me slowly. Rose predominates, along with an unidentifiable and odd fruity note (I read somewhere that it's passion fruit); as it dries down, it takes on a woodier, almost incenselike aura. It is clean and transparent, with no trace of powderiness, which is very appealing to me. Definitely an oddball fragrance, not for those who like sweet and uncomplicated smells, and very distinctive.