Le Jardin Retrouve Revives Yuri Gutsatz Perfume Tradition

Yuri Gutsatz. The man who legendarily perfumed the Paris Opera. In Paris, scentmakers are remembered long after their scents are gone. But the Gutsatz family, in particular Michel Gutsatz, is reviving Yuri's perfume tradition in Le Jardin Retrouve, a 7-scent collection of Yuri's 30 great fragrances. I understand that the intent is to release others later.

Yuri Gutsatz was born in St Petersburg in 1914 but made his way to France in 1933. Working in both Paris and Bombay (which helped him create the legendary Sandalwood Sacre), he was Vice President of the French Perfumers' Society for several years. Perhaps most importantly, he helped create the Osmotheque, France's "library" of perfumes, but he was also a perfume critic, and a strong believer that creative freedom was as necessary for the perfumer as for the writer or actor.

Gutsatz's Le Jardin Retrouve perfume house opened in Paris in 1975, long before the current niche perfume craze started. By my own digging, it may be the first of the true "niche" perfumers to exist, not including artisanal perfume oils made by craft scentworkers. Michel Gutsatz has chosen to re-launch the house and to protect his father's creations from reformulation. It's reformulation that has ruined a number of famous and even classic scents, including Robert Piguet's Bandit (reformulated so many times that it's almost impossible to find the true vintage scent; I've looked). Some minor reformulation of the old scents has become necessary, due to such issues as the irritants in oakmoss, one of perfume's most important basenotes, but Le Jardin Retrouve is staying as close to Yuri's original scents as is at all possible.

Le Jardin Retrouve also is now packaging its scents in an unusual and delightful way. A purchaser receives, at first, a Le Necessaire kit -- a 125 ml (a bit over four ounces) metal flask of their scent, a 50 ml bottle for dresser top, and a 15 ml travel bottle, along with a perfume funnel. The bottles are to be filled and refilled from the flask, which may be stored in a refrigerator to protect the contents from spoilage or turning. The flask can be re-ordered as desired, the individual flasks known as Le Re: Source, and the original bottles perpetually filled. This is a great idea, far less wasteful of a great scent than traditional sales methods.

The current scents include Citron Boboli, lemon with bitter orange; Eau des Delices, a true fresh cologne; Vervain d'Ete, a basil, lemon, bergamot and verbena garden scent; Rose Trocadero, made with BulgarIan Rose absolute and black currant; Tuberose Trianon, a classic tuberose fantasia; Sandalwood Sacree, a woody eau de perfume influenced by Yuri's time in India; and Cuir de Russie, a flowery leather not to be confused with Chanel's exclusif by the same name.

Although I'm not making the trip to Paris to visit the showroom, I'm ordering from the online showroom. No, you can't sniff your computer, and neither can I, but Le Jardin Retrouve makes three-sample sets or individual samples readily available by mail. I'm eagerly awaiting my samples for Lemon Boboli and Cuir de Russie.

Visit their website at LsJardinRetrouve.com, or their Facebook page. I can practically smell the gorgeous photography.