Heure Bleue and Heure de Nuit

Heure Bleue

Jacques Guerlain
1912, the first oriental floral perfume

You have to experience the blue hour to feel it. Blue hour is much more than a sunset. It is a tribute to the softness and harmony of the bucolic landscape. Heure Bleue is a romantic impressionism crystallized in a fragrance created by Jacques Guerlain.

Jacques Guerlain used to walk along the quays of the Seine on his way home. It was a privileged moment when Guerlain would abandon himself to solitude and to his childhood. We are in 1911, at the crossroads of romanticism and the First World War, bathed in an uncertain atmosphere. Every moment, every emotion is intense. What if it was the last one? The world oscillates between stupor, fear and the desire for peace.

Suspended by time, Jacques Guerlain contemplates the harmony of the evening. Nightfall, with its enchanting airs, shades the sun with its velvet coat. Silence overwhelms the city noise. It is the moment when the sky has lost its sun but has not yet found its stars. It is a moment of sweetness and infinite tenderness, of nostalgia too. The birds have fallen silent and there is no difference between the various elements of the landscape, not even man. Everything merges, everything stands still. The play of light and shadow no longer responds. Everything is twilight blue.

Barely Jacques Guerlain had time to breathe when the blue hour had already slipped from his hands. Moved, Jacques Guerlain had the singular and dizzying feeling that everything could stop. It was the last period of tranquillity before the war. Who, better than he himself, can tell us about it? Listen to his words

“The sun has set, yet night has not yet fallen. It is the suspended hour, the hour when everything is silent, the hour when man finds himself in harmony with the world and the light. In this deep blue light, everything, the trembling of the air, the quivering leaves, the almost invisible ripples of the water, is concentrated to express a love, an infinite tenderness.”

But words were not enough... The next morning, Jacques Guerlain went to his father's laboratory with the fervent intention of bringing back to life this fleeting moment of blue hour. For a year, Jacques Guerlain worked obstinately to capture this twilight alchemy. Much more than the harmony of an evening, it is a distant and visceral emotion that Jacques Guerlain tries to capture and materialise.

Jacques Guerlain drew his inspiration from the eyes of his wife Lily, for whom he had an unfailing admiration. He was fascinated by his wife's beauty, especially her eyes and her blond hair. Lily was a mysterious beauty.

Silent and deceptively shy, Heure Bleue perfume bewitches with its suave, soft and captivating trail. It is a tribute to that unforgettable twilight blue hour. This blue hour of the time between two worlds (romanticism and war), this blue hour that is at once serious, tangible and voluptuous. Heure Bleue evokes a graceful woman, with a discreet but tenacious sensuality and charm, who confesses herself modestly.

Heure de Nuit

A new creation sold in the exclusive Les Parisiennes range was created to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Heure Bleue by Guerlain.

A more contemporary version, with a more smiling top note, than its musky and very soft elder sister.

White musks mingle with the racy iris. The heliotrope note, combined with orange blossom to take on accents of marshmallow, tints the powdery facet with a light gourmand note like a veil. All the spirit of Heure Bleue is expressed in this perfume, a watercolour version.

Sylvaine Delacourte perfumes

Discover Sylvaine Delacourte's brand with her Orange Blossom, Musk and Vanilla Collections. You can try them thanks to the Discovery Boxes (5 Eaux de Parfum x 2 ml) and rediscover these raw materials as you have never smelled them before.