For a 120 year old creature, Jicky smells pretty good. I won't bore you or myself by repeating the various stories and legends surrounding Jicky's birth and name. All of that can be found online and chances are you've read it before. I'd much rather talk about the perfume itself.
Jicky has a loyal and steady fan base which I suspect doesn't include many men and women under the age of 25. A sharp green lavender note, just like French cinema and cauliflower, seems to be an acquired taste for most people. Even the the assertive citrus companion and the smooth vanilla drydown don't seem to help make Jicky as popular as it should be nowadays. Maybe it's the civet, though I personally don't feel much of the wild animal haunting the drydown in any of the more modern versions (super-vintage is completely different beast, pun intended, with all its civet and as Luca Turin mentioned in The Guide, most likely a lethal dose of nitro-musks).
For a fragrance famous for boasting a serious civet note, Jicky feels unusually cool, refined and even somewhat upper-drawer in a Katharine Hepburn way. It's so well-bred you can take it to spend the summer on the Vineyard or watch a polo match. But it's still a classic Guerlain, with all the joys of a sweet, smooth base, which makes me wonder why the parfum doesn't last more than 2-3 hours indoors and even less than that when I leave the house. Maybe I should just buy a bottle of the EDT and spray myself silly.
The bottle of parfum that I'm reviewing here, while not technically vintage, is at least five years old. I sniffed newer bottles and couldn't detect any difference, but some things only reveal themselves on skin. In any case, Jicky is still available from better Guerlain counters both in extrait de parfum and as an EDT. The latter can also be found from various online sources.
1994 ad featuring model Lucie de la Falaise from couleurparfum.com
I don't know, maybe it's us? I've always wanted this to work on my and it just doesn't. My skin eats it and as my BFF Sue put it after I applied the perfume "that doesn't smell like $300"
ReplyDeleteJicky and her Brother Mouchoir de Monsieur are the only classic Guerlains I really Love(Well maybe I should add Vol de Nuit extrait). I'm not a Guerlain girl, really, but I love these smooth and rough, dark and bright creatures. I prefer wearing them in the evening, before a long night out (or at home, with good company and good wine).
ReplyDeleteBTW, Jicky parfum lasts ages on me...MdM is more fleeting...
I do love the ad... beautiful.
ReplyDeleteLavender is just Not My Thing.
i just love that Jicky exists... no matter that it doesn't work for me in the wearable way. it is such a study in contrasts and texture. . . unusual, like a verile dandy. there is nothing like it out there today.
ReplyDeleteGotta say I love Jicky. It's been my scent for the last three years. I have a couple of hundred perfumes that I gathered through the years -I'm old :) but when I found Jicky, I knew it was me. I love that ad as well. It really captures what Jicky would be like if she were a person.
ReplyDelete