Questions about a giant Shalimar parfum bottle

I bought an enormous bottle of Shalimar parfum at the weekend from an extremely nice eBay seller. It's 125 ml so it's pretty enormous for the extrait. Well it seems big to me, anyway!

(Here's my lovely assistant modelling the bottle)



I am thrilled with it. Shalimar is my favourite scent in the world and it smells divine. I am curious about it though - like, when did Guerlain start and stop making these huge bottles of extrait? (And indeed why - it's AWESOME). The very nice lady I bought it from bought it new from Harrods (it was still sealed in the Harrods cellophane) during a Guerlain event at Harrods hosted by Roja Dove and thinks this was about eight years ago. In case it helps, the parfum comes in a purple case, and has a glass stopper rather than plastic.

I don't intend parting with it because I love it and will wear it often but I'd be very grateful to know more about my new purchase.

The box, as requested! It was funny - because the box was sold as sealed, the seller couldn't tell me any details about the inner box or the bottle. I was expecting a utilitarian, refill type bottle. I started laughing in sheer joy when I opened the box to find this huge fan bottle. it just struck me as funny - those bottles are in my head as 'supposed' to be very small. But it was a bit like seeing tiger kittens, you know? They're obviously still kittens but are giant in comparison to regular kittens.

Also, I paid £250 for this. And felt slightly sick about doing so at the time, let me add. What with not knowing what was going to be under the wrappers and also heck just 'cos that's a lot of change. More than I've ever spent on perfume. Heck, there aren't a lot of things I've ponied up so much for all in one go for a luxury item. However, as buying a bottle of Shalimar 30ml parfum new these days can set you back £180-ish, put like that it seemed more bearable.

Thanks to all who said nice things about the bottle - it's nice to be somewhere where Shalimar is loved so much And also for the extra info about the big bottle. A pity they stopped making them - I'm sure I'm not the only person who would save up my pennies to buy these enormous bottle of the classic Guerlains but I take the point about storage.

Oh, it's going to be worn, and often! I was wearing it just to mooch about the house on Staurday less than 15 minutes after first unwrapping the box. I did hesitate for a tiny moment but just because I hate cutting the little string on the bottleneck so much. It's not fun in the way that pressing a spoon through a new jar of coffee is, it feels more like I'm breaking something pristine. Even more so in this case because it had a little seal to peel off too. That's one of the reasons I took the first photo - at least I can look back on it when it was all sealed and brand new. Well, all sealed anyway.

For the first time I'm going to actually do what the senior Guerlain SA at Fortnum and Mason's always pleads with me to do with the parfum, though. Namely wipe down the stopper with a piece of silk before putting the glass stopper that's touched my skin back in the bottle. In the past I've just smiled politely and reflected that the bottle is likely to be gone before my skin cells and oils reach such critical mass as to start corrupting the beautiful parfum.