Guerlain Mon Guerlain

No house carries more weight in this category. Guerlain was founded in Paris in 1828 by Pierre-Francois-Pascal Guerlain, and for four generations the perfumer was a Guerlain: Aime, who composed Jicky in 1889 and effectively invented modern perfumery's use of synthetics; Jacques, who gave the world Shalimar in 1925; and Jean-Paul, who retired in 2002. Running through much of that catalogue is the Guerlinade, the house's recurring signature accord of bergamot, iris, jasmine, vanilla and tonka. In May 2008 Thierry Wasser was named the house's in-house perfumer, taking a title the family had held for most of two centuries.

Mon Guerlain, released in 2017, was the first true pillar fragrance created under that arrangement, and it is openly a modern reading of the Guerlinade. It is commonly attributed to Wasser working with Delphine Jelk; Guerlain's own product page names the materials rather than the noses. Those materials are the story: lavender essence harvested in Provence, sambac jasmine, sandalwood mainly grown and distilled in Australia, and vanilla of the tahitensis variety.

The opening is lavender and bergamot, cool and slightly medicinal, which is not where most modern women's fragrances start. Iris and jasmine sambac fill the middle with something powdery and faintly fleshy, and then it settles into the part everybody remembers: Tahitian vanilla, coumarin, benzoin, sandalwood and a thread of liquorice. Sweet, but dusty-sweet rather than sugared, with the slightly bitter almond edge that separates good vanilla from bad.

Angelina Jolie fronted the campaign from launch and donated her fee to charity, which gave the release an unusual amount of coverage.

Wear it in cool weather and after dark, though it is soft enough for daytime in a Cape winter. It is one of the more office-appropriate vanillas because the lavender keeps it from turning cosy.

The eau de parfum performs well without being aggressive: seven to nine hours, moderate sillage settling to a skin scent after four. Guerlain has since built intense, florale and eau de toilette versions around it, each shifting the balance. Nothing here is discontinued and the composition is recent enough to have escaped the reformulation problems that affect the house's pre-war classics.