So, let’s just say you’re a guy with at least a passing interest in designer fragrances, and you’ve been to the department store counters a handful of times in the past ten years. If this is the case, you might have noticed something about your available options from designer house Gucci, and that something is they are all guilty; every single last one of them guilty, and by that I mean Gucci Guilty, the dominant range among Gucci standard-line perfumes since their introduction in 2010 by then creative director Frida Giannini. Women fare a little better in their choices, with some surviving flankers from the discontinued 2009 fragrance Gucci Flora also introduced by Giannini, in addition to the Gucci Bloom range introduced by her replacement Alessandro Michele in 2016, and even a few carryovers from the lauded Tom Ford era for a few years longer than men got to enjoy them.
The fact of the matter is Gucci Guilty is all men have to choose from unless they’re open-minded enough (and deep-pocketed enough) to spring for the recently-launched upmarket line The Alchemist’s Garden, also introduced towards the end of Alessando Michele’s tenure as creative director. The reason for this may have evaded some, but is simply that Gucci has almost only released men’s market fragrances under the Gucci Guilty nameplate since the original men’s entry landed in 2011, with the sole exception being the Made to Measure release from 2013: a fragrance that even Gucci must have realized was pretty forgettable since it didn’t last long at counters, taking the rest of the “non-guilty” men’s releases with it to the grave when it went. So now, it’s all guilty, all the time, which may beg the question from some as to why? I can’t answer that with any authority, but we can certainly have a look.
To understand Gucci Guilty and its particular dominance on the men’s fragrance segment, in addition to just its dominance overall in the designer fragrance space, we have to look at it as an evolution of sorts; since like all things Gucci, the Gucci Guilty range was subject to several creative soft-reboots, with each new creative director stepping into the shoes of the departing one basically wiping almost everything they did away as they left, save for the most-success fragrance (or two). This means Gucci Guilty is a bit different than other pillar ranges in the men’s segment, like Chanel’s Bleu de Chanel or Ralph Lauren’s Polo, in that it has a lot of flankers that were designed to replace older flankers, and generally a lot more experimentation in the way it’s presented or marketed. All told, there are 28 different version of Gucci Guilty, 14 of them being men’s market releases, and two-thirds of them discontinued.
Frida’s Flankers
The launch of Gucci Guilty was emblematic of Giannini stepping out from the shadow of Tom Ford, who had remade Gucci in his image of being a sexed-up Chanel with the rebel sensibilities of Dior, turning the brand’s fortunes around enough to start a hostile takeover attempt from LVMH that resulted in a bidding war between it and eventual owner PPR (who became Kering later). Giannini spent the years 2004 until 2010 softening Ford’s designs until creating her own design language, which resulted in some lackluster interim perfumes too, echoing a pastel version of Ford’s aesthic. With Gucci Guilty, the new vibe was modern with a classic twist, rather than the more-extreme retro-futurism stuff Ford was doing for the brand’s perfume arm. Gucci Guilty, the eponymous women’s fragrance, was a modern lilac housed in a jewelry box-styled bottle adorned with a see-through double-G logo.
Aurelien Guichard composed the women’s debut, while the men’s was created in 2011 by Jacques Huclier, known for his creation of A*Men for Thierry Mugler in 1994. Huclier introduced the ethyl maltol “bubblegum” note to an otherwise-standard citrus aromatic fragrance, counter-balancing the sweetness of this note and neroli with lavender, patchouli, cedar, and white musks. An Intense version of both fragrances also saw release, dispensing with any transparent qualities each had in favor of thicker musks and a sharper, more sheer wear. Frida then launched a pair of Black flankers in 2013, once again handled by Guichard and Huclier for women’s and men’s; but the men’s version was of remarkably similar stripe to the original, just being a bit greener, soapier, and less sweet; it was as if Gucci wanted to bring in a more-mature crowd not convinced by the original.
This is where we start to get limited-editions that the terminally-online will swear smell different, but the brand says are just the same fragrance in collectible botttles. In 2014 there was a Studs edition, then in 2015 a Diamonds edition, and finally a Platinum edition right as Giannini was sent packing for uninspiring designs that launched Gucci’s fortunes downward. Before that, another set of flankers called Eau was issued, with unknown perfumers this time and the men’s iteration again being uncomfortably close to the original entry, just a bit drier and brighter to fit the theme. My guess is if it ain’t broke, Giannini didn’t fix it, since Gucci Guilty pour Homme ended up spawning imitators from as high up as Maison Francis Kurkdjian Amyris Homme in 2012, to the more-populist Paco Rabanne Invictus in 2013, making Gucci Guilty pour Homme one of the most low-key trend-setters of the decade in men’s fragrance.
Alessandro’s Absolutes
When Alessandro Michele came on board in 2016, the first thing he did was start to move Gucci into a more-colorful, bohemian, and increasingly-referential direction that called upon the 80’s maximalism of Maurizio Gucci, mixed with genderfluid designs that both celebrated differences in masculine and feminine, while also combining them. On the fragrance front, he more or less declared Gucci Guilty too commercial, staid, and boring by shaking things up with the Absolute flankers in 2017. The women’s was a raspberry rose and patchouli chypre, while the men’s a massive throwback to the Aldo Gucci era with its 70’s green patchouli leather accord. The polarizing flankers would shake up the online enthusiast spaces, which had long ago written-off Gucci as consumerist dreck for plebian noses, especially in the wake of the ubiquity Gucci Guilty pour Homme had achieved via its own immense popularity.
The men’s version of Absolute as penned by master perfumer Alberto Morillas created a massive stir among guys online because – well, you know – there is quite the obsession with vintage styles and a lot of “when a man’s cologne was really a man’s cologne” posturing in the online space, so something hearkening back to the style of Caron Yatagan is an instant love for that subset. Michele kept turning heads with the shared Gucci Guilty Oud, which mixed the raspberry rose and petrol leather of the two gendered Absolute flankers on a bed of synthetic oud, and lasted all of a single year on shelves before being discontinued. Carrying on unabated, Michele issued Cologne pour Homme with Morillas making a semi-traditional powdery citrus floral cologne like something a mature Italian patriarch would apply before heading out for his day’s business, complete with an old-fashioned heliotrope note.
[pullquote]The polarizing flankers would shake up the online enthusiast spaces, which had long ago written-off Gucci as consumerist dreck for plebian noses[/pullquote]Alessandro’s attempts to connect with the inclusivity of Gen Z while revisiting traditional perfumery styles only continued with Love Edition released in holiday 2019 for Valentine’s Day 2020. The bottles for these used vintage pastel colors and the men’s version was Morillas’ attempt to turn Gucci Guilty into a proper fougère. This came before the 2020 release of Gucci Guilty pour Homme Eau de Parfum, which replaced the old Intense flanker, while Cologne pour Homme replaced the men’s Eau, and the original women’s eau de toilette (along with Intense) were repackaged in the men’s “whiskey flask” bottles to show “equality of the sexes” according to Michele. The men’s eau de parfum turned out to be a bizarre dandy fusion of spiced rose and salty ambergris with the DNA of the original men’s entry, yet remarkably sold well enough to stay its own execution as Alessandro stepped down in 2022.
De Sarno De-Escalates
Michele’s designs helped push Gucci over the 10 billion mark in sales, although the increasingly-progressive nature of his work was starting to alienate Gucci’s wealthiest buyers, who had been growing increasingly conservative as they had gotten much wealthier and more powerful in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic; so outside the liberal Hollywood jetset that might enjoy Alessando’s styles, these customers wanted more-traditional representations of gender, alongside more understated displays of wealth. Shareholder pressure for Michele to change in order to reflect this direction, alongside slowly stagnating sales (across all lines) would lead him to step down likely before he could be fired, with his replacement being Sabato de Sarno, a more conventionally-minded former menswear designer brought over from Valentino. Love Edition MMXXI would come out inbetween.
The newest and so far final edition to what I imagine was originally meant to be a semi-annual seasonal release schedule was another Morillas composition; but at least for the men’s side of things, was far less inventive than the previous Love Edition, feeling mostly like a retouched version of Gucci Guilty Eau pour Homme with added pepper and lavender. The first order of business for Gucci Guilty after Alessandro’s departure was to wipe out remaining flankers from both the Giannini and Michele era that didn’t fit the new direction, and creatively reboot the line a second time to be more-streamlined, focused on the style of the original Aurelian Guichard and Jacques Huclier compositions, and bringing a greater “luxury presentation” to the range both by price-matching to brands like Chanel and Dior (which sit nearer the top of the designer market), and offering “concentrations” rather than flankers.
To that end, we come full-circle, and the original Gucci Guilty alongside its men’s iteration launched under Giannini sit at the entry-level, with Alessandro’s Gucci Guilty pour Homme Eau de Parfum and Gucci Guilty Intense Eau de Parfum sitting in the middle, with a new pair of Gucci Guilty Parfum and Gucci Guilty Parfum pour Homme released at the top while Sabato de Sarno is onboarded by staff. What this means for the future of the Gucci Guilty range is uncertain; but gone are the sometimes superfluous, sometimes zany, sometimes cult-classic flankers across a decade of madness that got us here. Maybe Sabato will see to it that men don’t have -just- Gucci Guilty releases to choose from when shopping for new Gucci fragrances, although I doubt he’ll bring Gucci No. 3 or Gucci Nobile back from the dead. Either way, I can’t say I haven’t enjoyed the ride, and if you have too, you’re also guilty as charged.
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Guilty Absolute has definitely been a welcome extrait-of-boldness in the designer ballpark, long awaited. I see that one as the Fahrenheit of the 2010's.
Guilty Cologne might not eneter history as much as the previous one, butit's for sure also very innovative.
Thanks for the great history of this line!
If you read the article, you'd already know that Frida Giannini was responsible for the creative direction after Tom Ford, and was hands-on with the fragrances like Tom Ford was. Therefore you need to place the onus or blame on Giannini for whatever you don't like, not P&G. The whole progression of softening the aesthetics of Gucci and making it friendlier to the masses was Frida's doing.
When Alessandro Michele came along, he wanted to undo all that softness and be bolder/more edgy again; but all of this is just me re-stating the article again so I'll just let you re-read it. My point is P&G didn't -destroy- anything. They didn't call any shots, and when Coty got the license because P&G shut down their fine fragrance arm, they too remained beholden to whoever at Gucci is making the briefs and calling the shots.
The Tom Ford stuff was developed under a different licensee (Scannon, then Elf Aquitane/Sanolfi/YSL Beauté), and PPR/Kering either didn't have rights to those fragrances after Ford left, or just chose to let the manufacturing contracts on them run out when the deal with Sanofi ended, instead of asking P&G to attempt reconstructing them.
If you remember, P&G had to reconstruct both Dolce & Gabbana plus many Lacoste fragrances from scratch because Euroitalia and Shaneel/Patou wouldn't sell rights to the original formulas, and we all see how well that turned out, didn't we? Gucci probably wasn't willing to make that mistake or get in a tussle with Ford, who regurgitated most of his stuff years later in Private Blends.
Besides, better to let good scents die than zombie-walk as bad reformulations, right? Nobody wants that terrible Made in UK D&G pour Homme.
And, Gucci Pour Homme II was created in 2007, already under Frida Giannini behind Creative Director position.
I just wanted to say, I find Alessandro Michele as bad Creative Director as Frida was. I highly doubt Sabato de Sarno changes ANYTHING. For me, Gucci is dead as a fragrance house. RIP.
Why are you here? Get off my article if you're going to troll.
Great story about that. I was in one of the "finer establishments" near the Gucci counter, sniffing cognoscenti-approved products, when a friendly, thirty-something, jock type pulled up next to me, looking to try out Gucci Guilty Pour Homme on a recommendation. He really liked it, and we got talking. He asked me what I thought about the scent. I refused to kill his buzz, and instead regaled him with the positives that I knew - subtle, pleasant, popular, modern, and "women like it" - all of which were truths for which I could vouch. When he asked the important question - did I own it? - I confessed that I didn't, but that I tended to like stronger and more unusual fragrances. AND - as I told you - I was still thinking about buying it.
He walked out with a bottle. Between me, him, and the SA, three perfume lovers had a great and memorable day!
Ironic but not unanticipated that my first bottle from the line was the Absolute Pour Femme! 😁
I should have bottled on the Absolute Pour Homme when it was easy. An excellent scent. But very thankful I got the Absolute Pour Femme - it's one of my favorite roses!
I said it all depends on why you wear fragrances in the first place, and if you just want to "smell good" for other people or effectively just hang a little tree air freshener from your neck because you don't want to engage with your own scent, something like what he was choosing is perfectly fine, and that I had plenty of things like that too.
Then I more or less said, but if you want something that actually smells interesting or entertaining to your nose, like a favorite song or food, or wear something that reminds you of a place or time in your life, then most of the things you wear to smell pleasant and fine aren't going to cut it anymore. Once you reach that point and you start digging for more stimulating smells, that's when things like Terre d'Hermes start appealing more.
He literally said "so you mean just wearing things you enjoy smelling throughout the day, no matter what anyone else thinks?" and I was like "yes exactly!". That's when you dig into things that smell like nature, or motor oil, or vintage fragrances that evoke the past, and niche fragrances like what was sold upstairs (men's counter in the basement of Nordstrom Seattle).
He was like yeah, someday I might go that way, but his life the way it was didn't really facilitate the time or places where he -could- wear something like that according to him. This was pre-pandemic mind you, and everyone was still going to the office and then the night club, the de-rigeur white collar life for young successful men lol
It ended with him asking what I do for a living. I said I'm a security guard, and I'm outside almost all day, by myself, and nobody even smiles at me let alone wants to comment on my fragrance. My limiting factor is price, not situations. He said maybe when he's the boss he'll buy a bottle of the Hermes I was checking out, but for now it has to be (I think it was Dylan Blue he got).
Moral of the story is fragrances like Gucci Guilty know their audience and the level of that audience's interest in fragrance itself, and perhaps had a hand in helping shape that audience too if you want to put on the tin foil hat, but it's no longer "if you make it they will come" like it might have been years ago or how people in the online fragrance community see it.
You not only have to convince a lot of folks it's okay to smell like a tree stump or a patch of oakmoss rubbed with cat butt, but you also have to convince them it's okay to want that smell in the first place. Such is the nature of things now I've noticed. Even the most outwardly-confident "alpha bros" are incredibly self-conscious about things like smell.
They need permission, even if they'd punch you out for telling them they do to their face (not recommended).
I have tried Gucci Guilty Absolute for Men... and find it fascinating for a commercial designer release, but it's unwearable for me, sadly, due to some kind of note sensitivity. Mind you, I can wear Rien and Private Label just fine, which are much stronger, gnarlier leathers; but something in Absolute for Men goes all screechy in the opening. Fabulous dry down once it arrives, though.
@Varanis Ridari - out of curiosity, which from the Guilty line are your favorites?
That said, I do enjoy them for what they are, I just wish there was more than them to choose from that isn't an Alchemist Garden $400 retread of an Ajmal or Lataffa fragrance you can get for $60.
Personal attacks are also against code of conduct here so I'll be both reporting this comment and blocking you.
Have a day. Not a nice day, just a day.