The 90’s were a good decade for nectar-ish florals and amber-ish sweetness. So many fragrances launched during those years featured them prominently; as the other side of the Calone coin and airy cleanliness, heavy honeyed florals were the other end of the spectrum. And Jean Paul Gaultier (nicknamed Classique at the end of the decade) came busting like a boudoir on fire, powder and orange blossom vanilla! JPG starts with subtly fruity and slightly spicy bergamot and aniseed. The orange blossom shows from the start, this is the note on which the whole fragrance revolves around, and it’s bigger than life. Supposedly there’s tuberose and ylang ylang, but honesty I can’t really smell neither one of them. There’s a certain ‘full fat-ness’ that I assume is the buttery quality of ylang, but the Queen is nowhere to be seen. I wonder though if you can sense her in brief glimpses of green that flash for nanoseconds before disappearing. There’s also a pronounced nail polish effect which I assume is either aldehydes or a combination of notes. After all, the inspiration behind it included powdered wigs, nail enamel and dusty theater curtains. The heart and base notes show the orange blossom in full bloom; heady and heavy, honeyed and spiced up. But the spices are gentler than what previous decades offered, and here we get cinnamon and ginger primarily, at times evoking the scented potpourris that permeated the air in homes, stores and everywhere in the mid 90’s; come autumn and winter, you couldn’t escape the scent of cinnamon and vanilla that permeated many a store! The base shows said spices, but softened by creamy vanilla, amber and sandalwood. The powderiness doesn’t show up on me until the very end, and then it’s a soft violet powder, reminiscent of Oscar de la Renta; mysterious, solemn, beautiful. The bottle which I own comes from 1995, when it was simply called Jean Paul Gaultier. And while the bottle looks like a modernist tribute to Elsa Schiaparelli’s Shocking bottle, the enfant terrible created something equally avant Garde for its time; it was the 90’s and early 00’s equivalent of what Poison, Giorgio and the likes were to the 80’s. Loud, bombastic, never taking itself too seriously. And it succeeded because it was fun and well made. A modern classic and one of the nicest orange blossoms. The formula of today is quite thin, pale and soulless (what else is new?), heck even the color is almost transparent compared to the deep amber of the vintage. The 2016 Essence de Parfum is the closest to the original release and one of the nicest flankers; while not the same, it has the same huge orange blossom, ‘modernized’ with the current novelties, whipped cream and chili. But totally worth it if you miss the old Classique. And equally strong and powerful.
Jean Paul Gaultier Classique does not list jasmine in the official notes, yet it smells like a glittery jasmine vanilla powder bomb on a drunken dance floor. It recalls an evening I visited a friend, and without informing me first, she had agreed with other friends that we'd all meet up and go to a club. Being a brutally shy homebody, that's the last thing I EVER want to do, but as a visiting guest, you're sometimes trapped into these things, and I am also a people pleaser. So there you go. And there we went. The ladies' room was filled with tipsy club-goers fixing their hair and makeup, and our mutual friend pulled a whole-ass bottle of perfume from her purse to refresh her scent. Even I, being the perfume-obsessed weirdo I am, think that's strange. A whole bottle, wow. Anyway, that bottle was this Jean Paul Gautier scent, and to this day, it makes me think of boozy nightclub cocktails and the jasmine-scented tears of strangers in bathrooms telling me they love me just moments before puking on my feet.