L'Initial Eau de Parfum
L'Initial Eau de Parfum is Thierry Wasser's 2021 sweetened reissue of the 1998 Initial — the iris-and-rose original brought into Guerlain's modern caramel-and-tonka template.
The scent fingerprint
Weighted by intensity across 5 accords.
Every perfume in Sillage is represented as a distribution across canonical accord slugs — a lingua franca for scent. Two fragrances with overlapping fingerprints are scent-twins, even if they share no literal note.
- Caramel80
- Iris70
- Vanilla65
- Rose
The note pyramid
- Jasmine
- Orange
- Bergamot
- Iris
- Turkish Rose
- White Musk
By the editors · 2 min readL'Initial Eau de Parfum is Thierry Wasser's 2021 sweetened reissue of the 1998 Initial — the iris-and-rose original brought into Guerlain's modern caramel-and-tonka template. Bergamot, orange, and jasmine in the top read airier than the predecessor; the citrus is restrained and the jasmine tilts soapy.
Iris and Turkish rose anchor the heart. The iris is the powdery-cosmetic kind rather than rooty earth, sitting close to the modern Guerlain guerlinade rather than the niche L'Art tier. Caramel-toned vanilla joins tonka, white musk, and a wisp of patchouli underneath, building a soft drydown that pulls toward the brand's mass-market signature.
Mid-projection, six to eight hours' wear. Cool-weather day or any-season evening, a polished wardrobe iris for buyers who find Iris Ganache too dense.
Scent twins
Factual metadata (name, house, year, notes) is seeded from public datasets. The editorial reading and scent fingerprint are written by Claude against our house style — none of it is scraped prose. Read our methodology.