Best Derby by Guerlain Alternatives & Similar Perfumes

Created by Master Perfumer Paul Parquet in 1882, Fougère Royale completely revolutionized the world of perfumes and established modern perfumery as it exists today. As well as creating an entirely new fragrance family, Parquet had succeeded in extracting isolated, synthetic molecules from natural, raw materials. In the dedicated pursuit to expand olfactory palettes with novel, new aromas, he’d derived coumarin from the tonka bean in a worldwide premiere. In its mission to authentically replicate the original, regal masterpiece from centuries past, the reengineered formula cultivates refined, prestigious raw materials of the highest quality and provenance. This masterfully revamped Fougère Royale retains its elegant, noble, refined pulse and its pleasant, pastoral beauty.

The perfectly-blended perfume is redolent of green and fragrant foliage with densely shaded woodlands. Sweet green grasses suggest the freshly-released essences of a crushed and dewy verdure, with an intense hint of newly-mown hay.

Fougère Royale’s nuanced scent composition opens with a vibrant, sparkling cocktail of bergamot, lavender and Mediterranean herbs. The heart follows, with floral-spicy Rondeletia accord, rare in most perfumes. Opening into rich geranium and warm spices. A floral intermezzo showcases rare rose essences and absolutes, spiked by pepper, cinnamon and carnation. Finally, a grand finale of earthy, ambery and woody harmonies, where moss notes join a sensual patchouli enriched by warm coumarinic undertones of tonka beans and clary sage absolute.

Black in name, black in nature: black pepper, incense, leather, licorice, birch tar. The effect is tough but comforting — a campfire shot through with sparks of nutmeg, and more than a hint of gasoline-infused motorbike saddle.

This EdT plays it dark but bright. A spiky black pepper opening commands attention, before being volumised by an ebony chorus of black tea, birch tar and incense. Tree moss and violet lend a perfumed earthiness.

Perfumer Antoine Maisondieu

Formerly known as East India the perfume is back with the new name: Vi et Armis (Latin for 'by force and arms',  the motto of the East India company)

The olfactory references in the perfume are exploring Britain’s complex relationship with other nations and its dominance of international sea trade across the centuries, this heady, narcotic scent challenges as much as it beguiles.

Using imported and exported goods of the East India Company as its key notes, this addictive fragrance recalls the words of George Bernard Shaw: “Emotional excitement reaches men through Tea, Tobacco, Opium, Whisky and religion”

Paradoxical and challenging, we imagine the roots of our island nation steeped in contradictions.

The name means “immortal saints”, and this eau de parfum is a timeless white floral that conjures sunshine and joy. Blood orange and Champagne fizz out of the top, swirling around lavish tuberose and heady jasmine grandiflorum. The holy trinity of Cashmeran, ISO E Super and ambroxan creates a base that clings to skin, fabric and memory. 

Perfumer: Maud Chabanis

The dawning of a new energy, embodied by a clean and lean leather and patchouli. A blood orange sun rises over rose and saffron’s blazing circle, liberating leather’s endless power.

The colors of the day are melting. In the shadows, feelings take surprising shapes. The night is calling. Softness is in the air. Silent connections form. The alchemy is real. Two shadows. One.

Sombra is a dirty shadow of tough rose and oud, spiced with saffron and nutmeg. Tolu balsam bathes the composition in a twilight effect of almost-sweet tobacco and leather, for an animalic result that purrs.

Seminalis is our first stimulus in a fragrance bottle.
An aromatic aldehyde which helps sperm to locate the ovum, biological proof of olfactive attraction.
Life initiated by smell.

Perfumer: Luca Maffei

It's a perfume built around natural oud and it meticulously highlights most nuances oud might posess: dry driftwood, then a mushroomy damp stump aroma, smoky charred logs and suddenly soft honeyed amber and green leaves.

Oud accords are often made safer and sweeter in a lot of perfumes. However, natural oud oil would only be distilled from a certain type of tree developing a fungal infection and responding to it in its own chemical way. Hence real oud oil smells both like old damp wood and at the same time like some clean smelling medicinal substance and lots of aromatic shades in between.

Oud Imperial explores this dichotomy of earthy vs. sunny, ancient vs. fresh, decay vs. renewal and so on.

Also available as an extrait. The EdP option smells drier and more like a damp autumn forest (and has a peculiar mushroom effect). The extrait of Oud Imperial is more ambery (softer) and the smokiness of natural oud is much more pronounced.

Perris are rebalancing each composition for the extrait version. They shift the focus from the top notes to the base raising the amounts of base ingredients to achieve a richer, more opulent and luxurious effect. Pure indulgence in the theme.