Question:
Is the name Heritage a direct reference to this fragrance's shared notes of Jicky and MdM? What a magnificent Guerlain!

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I have never had the slightest interest in "Heritage", then I read your post. I must smell it now. How fabulous it must be if you can relate it to "Jicky" and "Mochoir de Monsieur"!

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Originally Posted by fraddicted I have never had the slightest interest in "Heritage", then I read your post. I must smell it now. How fabulous it must be if you can relate it to "Jicky" and "Mochoir de Monsieur"! Also, unlike Jicky and MdM, the EdT is available, heavily discounted, from many on-line stores.

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I think the name has to do with their tag line: "Héritage, composed by a man of today, inspired by the men of the past and dedicated to the men of the future - marking a whole new stage in man's desire to write his own history" and alludes to the heritage embodied in the great Frenchmen of the past (who certainly would have worn Jicky and Mouchoir!).

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I think it just means that it harkens back to classic men's fragrances.
I can't see it relating to Mouchior or Jicky since it doesn't have that nauseating ingredient civet.

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Originally Posted by MikeFromManhattan I think it just means that it harkens back to classic men's fragrances.
I can't see it relating to Mouchior or Jicky since it doesn't have that nauseating ingredient civet. OK, I agree, no civet in Heritage. But these notes are shared by Jicky, MdM and Heritage in a very similiar, very Guerlain way: Bergamot oil, Lemon, Mandarin, Jasmin, Orris, Rose, Amber, Tonka - minus the baby vomit!

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A Guerlinade by any other name smells just as sweet...

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For me the uniting element in Mouchoir and Jicky is the anise. I know the two share other elements, and their bases are the same similar dense blend, with Mouchoir being a little bit more open.
I've been wearing Jicky for two days now, thinking about this thread, and with a shot of Heritage edp on my wrist tonight it does seem close in construction to Mouchoir, but less to Jicky. More wood to Heritage, but it's also got the same kind of elongated smell--part of the smell at the top of your breath and another part of the smell at the bottom--that Mouchoir masters. Heritage seems so much more sweetness, and to turn on that sweetness, where Mouchoir and Jicky seem to turn on that off-putting almost sour barbed fish hook of a smell, anise.
I know Ruggles isn't suggesting that they're the same, or belong together in a scent category, so I naturally agree with him, but I'm not quite sure if I can see a heritage of Jicky and Mouchoir in Heritage either. Heritage seems warm and wholesome in a way that Jicky and Mouchoir don't. They seem to offer distance, and introspection.
Love 'em all three I say.
--Chris

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Lavender connects all three, civet and the stronger animalic base as a result of it and other ambery components separate Jicky and Mouchoir de Monsieur definitively from Héritage’s minimal ambery elements, which have hardly any salience aromatically speaking. While Héritage is often classified as a Oriental Ambery fragrance, I think, and many would agree, that Oriental, Woody, Spicy is a better, more multi-dimensional classification.

I've seen Mouchoir de Monsieur categorized as an Aromatic Fougère, but I don't really see the interplay and direct and salient connection between lavender and oakmoss in it. In fact, what Héritage and Mouchoir de Monsieur share is the short duration of the lavender note that doesn't really carry and integrate wholly with the basenote accord and there is certainly no prominence of oakmoss that would really, wholly justify the categorical categorization of Mouchoir de Monsieur as an Aromatic Fougère. As many have noted, Jicky tends to be heavier on the masculine lavender than its brother the Monsieur. The same tendency towards categorical categorization leads many to question, indeed, whether Héritage itself is an Aromatic Fougère or an Oriental when they consider its lavender note. It's oriental in its sweetness (tonka) and spiciness (coriander, pepper, and patchouli), and woody because of the prominence of cedar and patchouli. There's oakmoss is there, but the main interplay is not between lavender and oakmoss; it's between the spicy heart notes and the rich warm vanillic woody base once the quick clarion cry of the lavender is over. The spicy piquancy of the patchouli and the cedar also reiterate the spice notes at the same time that they abate them and smooth them out reinforcing the woody spiceness in an obverse way. This is very, very different to how Jicky and Mouchoir de Monsieur work their magic.
In the final analysis one could split hairs all night long, but I think Chris got it exactly right--as usual--when he spoke about the difference in terms of feel.

If I may be allowed a flight of fancy in taking that difference in feel one step further: I would say that the enveloping warmth of Héritage is the end point and assuredness of substantive bourgeois success and prominence (hence the name Héritage); whereas, the cold distancing feel of Jicky and Mouchoir de Monsieur is the product of the uncertainty of bourgeois success in the tenuous aristocratic fin de siècle world of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Maybe this is the real connection between the three?

scentemental


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Originally Posted by scentemental If I may be allowed a flight of fancy in taking that difference in feel one step further: I would say that the enveloping warmth of Héritage is the end point and assuredness of substantive bourgeois success and prominence (hence the name Héritage); whereas, the cold distancing feel of Jicky and Mouchoir de Monsieur is the product of the uncertainty of bourgeois success in the tenuous aristocratic fin de siècle world of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Maybe this is the real connection between the three? This is a very interesting point, a "cultural" interpretation of a fragrance. I'm very fond of reviews trying not only to analize the way a scent is made but to link this way of composition to phenomena going beyond that (e.g. to cultural or social backgrounds, as done here).
Once I read Jicky was a perfume used by "dandies" of the Fin de siècle. I would rather claim them to be "aristocratics"(type of Des Esseintes in "A rebours" or Andrea Sperelli in "Il piacere"). I doubt that people with "new money", belonging to the bourgeois class, would have worn such an "eccentric" perfume.
But, of course, the difference between Jicky and Mouchoir on the one hand side, and Héritage on the other hand remains. Héritage without a doubt is less experimental - and "self assured" is the right word to describe it. Maybe it (Héritage) symbolizes the switch that has happened in society: "Audacious" (does this word exist) people, "dandies" are no more considerable part of society (now that's an exaggeration, I know). The house of Guerlain "just" made a fragrance for its contemporary clients.
I'd therefore suggest that Héritage - in its idea - isn't a descendant of Jicky and Mouchoir. I'm quite sure that at the moment other houses produce more provocative, "isolating" (from the rest of society), "dandy-style" fragrances. (Certainly some of Serge Lutens and Frédéric Malle. Creed, as much as I love them, seems to be too "established".)
However, I don't have a solution for all that, but I'm very thankful for the previous "postwriters" that have guided my attention to this aspect.
Steffen