Guerlain Jicky (extrait de parfum)

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, 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 too short-lived drydown.

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.

My bottle of parfum, 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 parfum and as an EDT. The latter can also be found from various online sources. The Perfumed Court, as always, sells samples.

1994 ad featuring model Lucie de la Falaise from couleurparfum.com