Guerlain - Cuir Beluga

I was planning to write something else than a perfume review now, but I couldn´t. Sometimes I get so fed up with myself and all the amazing perfumes that I write about, and then it´s nice to write about something else as a change.


Of course I´ve got a lot of perfumes lying around that smells like *meh* and even worse, but honestly, it´s not that much fun neither to try them or to write about them. And those kinds of perfume disasters that are so strange/bad/wrong that it´s fun to write about them because of that, well that kind of perfumes I don´t encounter so often.


Guerlian´s Cuir Beluga is anything but *meh*. Cuir Beluga is a part of Guerlains L'Art et la Matière, an exclusive line of perfumes, only available in Guerlian flagship stores. I haven´t been on a trip to Paris to buy my own bottle of Cuir Beluga (even though I wish I had), I happened to find me a nice little decant of it.


I dared to buy 5 ml of Cuir Beluga (and another from L'Art et la Matière, but more about that later) unsniffed, and I can assure you that I´m not regret it.


My first impression was... ooooh... lala... I belive that I never have sniffed a scent that smell so luxurious, so expensive and so... much money kind of. The notes listed are aldehydes, tangerine, patchouli, immortelle, vanilla, amber, suede and heliotrope.


When I getting used to the expensive scent I get a lot of impressions and associations by Cuir Beluga. Enormus sand dunes in pale golden color, but looking on each grain of sand you can see that they´re all unique. Soft, melting praline. Long evening dresses in softest nude colored skin. Pale make-up with bleached eyebrows. Redish blond women with long bones that got manicure and pedicure. Fair leather shoes with high, but comfortable heels. Relaxed, but not decadent, luxury. Piped cream with vanilla flavor in intricat patterns. A fan that slowly spins in the colonial Indochine.


Cuir Beluga is toned down, soft and caressing. There is a lot of things in Cuir Beluga that almost smells. I can almost sense the smell of leather, but the leather in Cuir Beluga is so soft that it almost smells like steaming jasmine-rice. It´s almost the smell of jasmine and heliotrope, but instead I can feel the smell of papery everlasting flowers, but still with the memories of summer and warmth left. It´s almost the smell of cinnamon, the color of cinnamon, the taste of cinnamon, but just almost. It´s almost like a cup of camomille tea with honey left the cool. It´s almost as the sound of quite, slow classical background music. It´s almost like the sunbeam shining through the curtains.


But as a fragrance it isn´t almost good. Cuir Beluga is a true beauty, but in a humble and silent way. Cuir Beluga isn´t (despite the name) anything for newly rich Russians (only joking, it goes for newly rich people no matter where they came from). No, Cuir Beluga is more like a perfume for people that are born into money. How I could have any idea about such a thing? I just make this up you know.


In Sweden (and surely other places to) it´s popular to smell clean and newly showered. I guess L'Eau Serge lutens could be really popular here. Even though my favorite in that cathegory is Neil Morris Clear. But, if people like the smell of clean, why coudln´t they like the smell of rich? If you are curious about that, I suggest that you try Cuir Beluga.


Cuir Beluga has super good lasting power, on me at least 12 hours. The soft leather hangs in there for a long time, but in the end Cuir Beluga is mostly a nice, creamy vanilla, very appropriate for Guerlain. Cuir Beluga is the utmost comfort and in a way very simple, yet complicated when analysing all the different parts of it. Cuir Beluga was released 2005 and created by Oliver Polge. I do suspect that my 5 ml decant will not last so long.


Have you tried any perfumes from L'Art et la Matière? Any favorites? Or are you curious about some of them?


Anyway, it was really fun that Anna from Nyköping won the Swedish Eurovison Song Contest, she has such an amazing voice that girl. But my personal favorite was "Keep on walking".




Pic: Free background