Gucci Mémoire d’une Odeur

Love the brand’s runway collections or not, Gucci seems to be having its moment in the sun under the creative direction of Alessandro Michele. Likewise, Gucci’s fragrant output is enjoying a renaissance on par with that of its Tom Ford years in the early 2000s. Entirely original compositions like Gucci Guilty Absolute pour Homme, quality mass-market releases including Gucci Bloom and its flankers, and novel concepts such as that of The Alchemist’s Garden collection have resurrected the brand’s reputation in the eye of many a perfume buyer. For those still unconvinced, the latest release from Gucci, Mémoire d’une Odeur, might just covert you. That is, if you can forgive it the hyperbole heaped on it by Gucci’s marketing department and seemingly every fashion magazine with an eye to fragrance.

The star of Mémoire’s composition is chamomile, a note many of us are familiar and one that plays to the ad spiel – but more on that later. Chamomile is itself an odd floral. In perfume it can present as fruity, something akin to green apples, or herbal and vegetal, or dry tea/hay-like, or even like petrol with intense leather characterises. In Mémoire, the prominent chamomile note sits firmly in the green-herbal category though does also dip a toe into the petrol-leather pool, if leatherier than petrolesque in character.

Gucci’s own notes list features:

chamomile, jasmine, musk, sandalwood, cedar, vanilla

My experience wearing Mémoire would suggest a notes list closer to this:

chamomile, bitter almond, jasmine, water accord, mineral notes, white musk, cedar

Mémoire opens bombastically with a bittersweet accord of herbal chamomile and almond which does fade from the fore but never entirely disappears from the composition. To anyone adverse to green/herbal scents, or a fan of those pink-hued florals that occupy department store counters, Mémoire’s opening will come as a shock, it might even be met with repulsion. Those that dare to persist will however soon be met by a more approachable floral as jasmine awash with a water accord join the fray, still backboned by the chamomile and almond, and which pushes into the transparent base of leather nuanced (the chamomile’s doing) white musk and cedar where a flint accord similar to that of the bouquet of a loamy soil sauvignon blanc lends interest. On skin, Mémoire’s herbal green, watery-floral-musk evolution is certainly intriguing.

Then one reads the ad spiel and bemused interest turns to “WTF?”. A few extracts from the enormously lengthy press copy follow:

“Everything comes from my obsession with scents: my memory is primarily olfactive so, for me, my sense of smell is my memory. I thought that, deep down, perfume is that thing that even with your eyes closed, brings you to a precise moment in space and time.” […]

We are in total agreeance here Alessandro, carry on;

Gucci Mémoire d’une Odeur is an elixir that transcends gender by its individuality, to establish a new olfactive family, Mineral Aromatic. […]

Fragrance was, is and will always be genderless! As for a new olfactory family, that’s a stretch. Mémoire’s composition is not in my opinion unique enough to be considered the principal of a new olfactory family.

Disrupting the traditional olfactive families that classifies fragrances, Gucci Mémoire d’une Odeur establishes a new modern fragrance category, Mineral, which is a mix of scents and emotions: airy, musky, transparent and authentic. […]

A quick online database search returns 40+ results for fragrances with prominent mineral notes…

“I had to think quite carefully about why Alessandro chose chamomile. When I started to work with the scent of chamomile itself, then I understood,” Morillas said. “No one had done it before…” […]

No one had done chamomile before? Bah! Clearly Alberto Morillas should have done his own database search.

“The guiding element of the entire campaign is the idea of freedom; the idea of the non-era, the non-place, the non-social. I pictured a world that was a fresco of a ‘mythological’ life in which the family is a private community with its own social framework where total freedom of expression prevails and where the roles of people and things aren’t clear. I pictured the memory of an authentic memory,” Alessandro Michele. […]

Ha?

So, not nearly as daring, original or complex as Gucci’s ad spiel would have us believe, and certainly not the first fragrance to employ chamomile in a composition as perfumer Alberto Morillas claims, Mémoire is nonetheless intriguingly different in its balancing of chamomiles’ comforting and confronting characteristics. In its pretty green bottle inspired by that of 1993’s Eau de Gucci, I can’t help thinking Mémoire is contemporary take on those aquatic aromatics that defined perfume in the ‘90s – what it’s not is the first of an entirely new genre as claimed. Forgiven the lunacy of Gucci’s marketing department and the delusion of Morillas, Mémoire d’une Odeur is worthy of a spot in my collection – amongst the aquatics – for liberal spritzing in spring and summer.

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Year of Release: 2019

Creative Direction: Alessandro Michele

Perfumer: Alberto Morillas

Alternatives: Calvin Klein CK One, L’Artisan Parfumeur The Pour Un Ete

Available: MYER, David Jones and www.gucci.com from $115, 40ml.