Bespoke Services　

In 1919, Jacques Guerlain created a legendary perfume called MITSOUKO. The name “Mitsuko” is instantly recognizable to anyone Japanese as a woman’s name. From the moment I first encountered this fragrance, my heart was drawn to it. Who was Mitsouko?

I soon discovered she was a character in Claude Farrell's novel La bataille (The Battle), where she falls in love with a British of ficer in the Royal Navy. Mitsouko was married to Sadao Yorisaka, a young Japanese marquis, and the British of ficer, Herbert Fairgan, was a friend of her husband. Both Herbert and Sadao died in the Russo-Japanese War. At the moment of his death, Sadao shockingly implies that he had known all along about the secret relationship between his wife and Herbert. Deeply moved by the story, I wanted to give Mitsouko and Herbert, who did not have a happy ending, a perfume as an everlasting tribute. Creating Herbert’s fragrance would be my sensory response to Mitsouko’s.

MITSOUKO, as is widely known, is a chypre floral fragrance with a fruity peach note with aldehydic C-14. But what would HERBERT's scent be like? The novel doesn’t provide a clear description, so I looked for subtle clues. I found references to ‘laurel’, ‘geranium’, and ‘tobacco’, and used these elements to compose a fragrance that would capture his essence.