Shalimar by Guerlain, from 1925 to 2025

Paris, 1925: Shalimar, Guerlain and Art Deco

In 1925 Paris held the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, which occupied the centre of the city and included the Grand Palais. It was there that a new style was first exhibited, and the style took its name from the event: Art Deco. At the same exhibition Guerlain presented Shalimar to the public, a perfume conceived by Jacques Guerlain.

The house goes back to 1828, when Pierre-François-Pascal Guerlain founded it, and its master perfumer today is Thierry Wasser. The Guerlinade, according to LVMH, is the Maison's signature fragrance accord. For Journal du Luxe it is a scent base that has become one of the house's signatures.

Shah Jahan, Mumtaz Mahal and the Shalimar Gardens

The Shalimar Gardens stand in Lahore, where the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan had them built in the seventeenth century. The same emperor ordered the Taj Mahal in Agra, raised in memory of his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who is entombed there. It is to their love story that Guerlain ties its perfume.

According to LVMH, Jacques Guerlain created Shalimar in homage to that tale. CB News writes that he chose this story to imagine an extraordinary elsewhere. The name Shalimar means "temple of love" in Sanskrit.

Ethylvanillin in Jicky, and a bottle inspired by gardens

The formula starts from another Guerlain perfume, Jicky: Jacques Guerlain added a few drops of ethylvanillin, a synthetic vanilla, to a bottle of it. Shalimar grew out of that blend and became the head of the amber family of fragrances. It opens with a fresh, light bergamot, and its heart is a bouquet of jasmine and rose, with iris. Elle Belgique calls that floral heart discreet; the base is amber and vanilla, with tonka bean and opoponax.

The bottle was designed by Raymond Guerlain and produced by Baccarat, in the spirit of Art Deco. Its shape is inspired by the basins of the Shalimar gardens, and Cosmetics Business writes that it evokes their fountains. The stopper is sapphire blue crystal, cut as a fan, and Journal du Luxe counts Shalimar among the first perfumes of its generation to wear a coloured stopper. The bottle was also the house's first to stand on a foot, made of Baccarat crystal.

From New York to the centenary

According to Journal du Luxe, the perfume's success began in New York, where women started the craze after a cruise that Madame Guerlain took part in. CB News writes that Shalimar sailed for New York as early as 1925, aboard a liner, and that America began to murmur its name. In 2013 Guerlain devoted a short film to Shalimar, La Légende de Shalimar, directed by Bruno Aveillan, in which Natalia Vodianova plays a princess. The film ends with the Taj Mahal rising from the water.

For the centenary in 2025, Guerlain presented Shalimar L'Essence, composed by Delphine Jelk. It uses Madagascar vanilla in an increased dose. The vanilla pods are grown in Madagascar and cut at Orphin, a small locality in the Yvelines where Guerlain produces its perfumes. There, the "Dames de table" finish bottles by hand with silk threads. For Shalimar they work on the neck of the bottle and on the silk threads.