Hoping To Sing Another Te Deum For Mitsouko by Guerlain {Scented Thoughts} {Perfume Short Reviews}

This is a follow up to my previous post about Mitsouko Eau de Toilette. During my recent trip to Europe I made a point of sampling Mitsouko by Guerlain in different places and in different concentrations because it was so hard for me to believe that the perfume's quality had completely gone down the drain. I still believe in a Guerlain gold standard of quality I suppose.

As I already mentioned in that previous post I was in shock when I tested Mitsouko at Marshall's last fall because it was so bad-smelling but at the same time thought there was perhaps a possibility that a cheaper version might have been dumped on sections of the export/US market....

Well, from a duty-free shop in Amsterdam to a Guerlain counter in Paris the results of the testings were the same: Mitsouko smells like a ghost of its former self. It now offers a synthetic overtone and a flattened impression that were not there before. This, unfortunately, applies to all three concentrations I found out, not just the eau de toilette. The parfum, eau de parfum, and eau de toilette, all three present a rather dominant synthetic hay-smelling note. I am guessing that it is the coumarin.

Back at home in Paris I was able to find an ancient bottle of Mitsouko pure parfum, unfortunately almost empty, but still having kept enough scent that I could refresh my memory of it. Even better and even more ironic, I found a bottle of Mitsouko deodorant dating from the same period, about 25-28 years ago, with a significant amount of product in it and it smells exactly like in my memory, that is rich, pruney (the peach), complex. The irony of course is that the deodorant version I have now smells 10 times better and richer than the current pure parfum extract of Mitsouko that is sold in Guerlain boutiques.

We have to hope that Mitsouko, somehow, will be restored to its old original richness and glory, even by other means.

I wanted to add that I also tried L'Heure Bleue in pure parfum and it seems to have been tampered with as well. In fact, I have an eau de toilette of it that smells more like the version I remember. I only sniffed Vol de Nuit parfum in the bottle and it seemed to smell the same although I must say that I did not have the courage to do a skin test in case I would have had to realize it had also been modified.