Habit Rouge by Guerlain, 1965

The recent version: The bergamot and lemon blast is complimented by rose - woody initially and then with carnation giving it a flowery note with some sweetness - although never really cloying. Patchouli gives the drydown some warmth, and amber, a bit of moss and a touch of vanilla lead to a sweet base that after five hours becomes increasingly pleasantly maturely powdery. At the same time the sweet leather note is always in the background; probably strongest in the middle and early base notes. This is a great, complex and classic scent, rich, with very good silage and projection. The longevity is brilliant... Eight hours and still just fading out... A great classic, well ahead of it's time, but one sees how it was released at the same time as Aramis... Update: I had the chance to wear a vintage version - maybe 20-30 years old in a sealed bottled that had leaked and possible of suboptimal quality: the essential characteristics were very similar, but the vintage version was deeper, a bit richer and overall less sweet and, interestingly, on my skin a bit less powdery. Also, the vintage version lasted a bit less long: about five hours in total. Otherwise the same unobtrusive, classic, restrained impression but possibly with ingredients of higher quality.

This is a review about the new Habit Rouge edp Its funny how we can change our mind over time. I was never a great fan of Habit Rouge, I felt it was too dated and old, the citrus opening bored me and I couldn't get what the fuss was all about. That intrigued me a lot cause I lOVE leather scents. But then I started to dig Guerlains chest of treasures and I met Jicky. Jicky is a lovely fougere oriental, it opens quite fresh and animalic with some civet and lavender, and slowly evolves to a leathery powder vanilla base needless to say that I immediately fell for it. You must be asking why am I talking about jicky, its because It made me understand why HR is so good! JPG managed to merry the beautiful powdery guerlinade (That I love) with the citric opening and the leathery animalic undertones in a new and genius way, but alway paying homage to the classics of the brand! So Habit Rouge edp opens whit a rich and deep citric, sharp smell, this fase lasts a lot in this concentration (I suspect that the oud play a part here, even though I cant smell it) Slowly it evolves to the leathery powder vanilla base (very similar to the jicky one in my opinion) you can clearly smell the leather and the vanilla its beautiful. To me Habit Rouge is one of the best leathers ever created and will always be on my collection in every concentration and vintage I can get my hands on, Thanks God I changed my mind about it!