Mitsouko is a

perfume Perfume (, ; french: parfum) is a mixture of fragrant essential oils or aroma compounds (fragrances), fixatives and solvents, usually in liquid form, used to give the human body, animals, food, objects, and living-spaces an agreeable scent. Th ...

by French perfume and cosmetics house

Guerlain Guerlain () is a French perfume, cosmetics and skincare house, which is among the oldest in the world. Many traditional Guerlain fragrances are characterized by a common olfactory accord known as the "Guerlinade" (fr). The house was founded in P ...

, created by

Jacques Guerlain Jacques Edouard Guerlain (; 7 October 1874 – 2 May 1963) was a French perfumer, the third and most famous of the Guerlain family. One of the most prolific and influential perfumers of the 20th century, over eighty of Guerlain's perfumes remain ...

and first introduced in 1919. Its name is derived from the French

transliteration Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...

of a Japanese female personal name

Mitsuko Mitsuko is a feminine Japanese given name. Possible writings The name Mitsuko is generally written with the kanji characters 光 and 子 which, when translated into English can mean "light, child" or "shining, child".http://www.20knames.com/femal ...

. It is a fruity

chypre Chypre ( or ) is the name of a family (or ''concept'') of perfumes that are characterised by an accord composed of citrus top notes, a middle centered on cistus labdanum, and a mossy-animalic set of basenotes derived from oakmoss. Chypre perfumes ...

whose top

notes Note, notes, or NOTE may refer to: Music and entertainment * Musical note, a pitched sound (or a symbol for a sound) in music * Notes (album), ''Notes'' (album), a 1987 album by Paul Bley and Paul Motian * ''Notes'', a common (yet unofficial) sho ...

include bergamot, its middle notes

peach The peach (''Prunus persica'') is a deciduous tree first domesticated and cultivated in Zhejiang province of Eastern China. It bears edible juicy fruits with various characteristics, most called peaches and others (the glossy-skinned, non-fu ...

rose A rose is either a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus ''Rosa'' (), in the family Rosaceae (), or the flower it bears. There are over three hundred species and tens of thousands of cultivars. They form a group of plants that can be ...

iris Iris most often refers to: *Iris (anatomy), part of the eye *Iris (mythology), a Greek goddess * ''Iris'' (plant), a genus of flowering plants * Iris (color), an ambiguous color term Iris or IRIS may also refer to: Arts and media Fictional ent ...

clove Cloves are the aromatic flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae, ''Syzygium aromaticum'' (). They are native to the Maluku Islands (or Moluccas) in Indonesia, and are commonly used as a spice, flavoring or fragrance in consumer products, ...

, and

jasmine Jasmine ( taxonomic name: ''Jasminum''; , ) is a genus of shrubs and vines in the olive family (Oleaceae). It contains around 200 species native to tropical and warm temperate regions of Eurasia, Africa, and Oceania. Jasmines are widely cultiva ...

, and its base notes

vetiver ''Chrysopogon zizanioides'', commonly known as vetiver and khus, is a perennial bunchgrass of the family Poaceae. Vetiver is most closely related to ''Sorghum'' but shares many morphological characteristics with other fragrant grasses, such as ...

oakmoss ''Evernia prunastri'', also known as oakmoss, is a species of lichen. It can be found in many mountainous temperate forests throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Oakmoss grows primarily on the trunk and branches of oak trees, but is also commonly ...

, and

labdanum Labdanum, also called ladanum, ladan, or ladanon, is a sticky brown resin obtained from the shrubs ''Cistus ladanifer'' (western Mediterranean) and '' Cistus creticus'' (eastern Mediterranean), species of rockrose. It was historically used in he ...

History

Mitsouko was created by

perfumer A perfumer is an expert on creating perfume compositions, sometimes referred to affectionately as a ''nose'' (French: ''nez'') due to their fine sense of smell and skill in producing olfactory compositions. The perfumer is effectively an artist wh ...

in 1919. The perfume has remained continuously available ever since. Mitsouko is preserved in its original 1919 formulation in the archives of the

Osmothèque The Osmothèque (from Greek ''osmē'' "scent" patterned on French ''bibliothèque'' "library") is the world's largest scent archive, a leading international research institution tracing the history of perfumery, based in Versailles with conferenc ...

, donated to the collection by Guerlain in-house perfumer

Thierry Wasser Thierry Wasser is a contemporary perfumer who as of 2008 was appointed as the in-house perfumer of Guerlain. Prior to this he worked under the fragrance firms Firmenich and Givaudan. After attaining his Federal Diploma of Botany at age twenty, Wass ...

. It has been re-formulated several times in the modern era. It was a favorite fragrance of

Charlie Chaplin Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is consider ...

Ingrid Bergman Ingrid Bergman (29 August 191529 August 1982) was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films, television movies, and plays.Obituary ''Variety'', 1 September 1982. With a career spanning five decades, she is often ...

Jean Harlow Jean Harlow (born Harlean Harlow Carpenter; March 3, 1911 – June 7, 1937) was an American actress. Known for her portrayal of "bad girl" characters, she was the leading sex symbol of the early 1930s and one of the defining figures of the ...

Sergei Diaghilev Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev ( ; rus, Серге́й Па́влович Дя́гилев, , sʲɪˈrɡʲej ˈpavləvʲɪdʑ ˈdʲæɡʲɪlʲɪf; 19 August 1929), usually referred to outside Russia as Serge Diaghilev, was a Russian art critic, pat ...

, and Anais Nin.

Name

There is no definitive information on the origin of the name. One account of the origin of the name is that it was inspired by the name of the heroine of

Claude Farrère Claude Farrère, pseudonym of Frédéric-Charles Bargone (27 April 1876, in Lyon – 21 June 1957, in Paris), was a French Navy officer and writer. Many of his novels are based in exotic locations such as Istanbul, Saigon, or Nagasaki. One of ...

's novel ''La bataille'' (''The Battle''). The novel is set in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

during the 1905

Russo-Japanese War The Russo-Japanese War ( ja, 日露戦争, Nichiro sensō, Japanese-Russian War; russian: Ру́сско-япóнская войнá, Rússko-yapónskaya voyná) was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1 ...

, and chronicles a fictional ''amour fou'' between a British Navy Officer and one "Mitsouko", the wife of Fleet Admiral Marquis Yorisaka. Both Yorisaka and the British officer sail to war, and Mitsouko awaits with

reserve Reserve or reserves may refer to: Places * Reserve, Kansas, a US city * Reserve, Louisiana, a census-designated place in St. John the Baptist Parish * Reserve, Montana, a census-designated place in Sheridan County * Reserve, New Mexico, a US vi ...

to see which of the two will return alive to her. The other possibility is that it was inspired by the story of

Mitsuko Aoyama Mitsuko Thekla Maria, Countess of Coudenhove-Kalergi (german: Mitsuko Thekla Maria Gräfin von Coudenhove-Kalergi; 7 July 1874 27 August 1941), formerly known as , was one of the first Japanese people to immigrate to Europe, after becoming the wi ...

, the mother of

Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi Richard Nikolaus Eijiro, Count of Coudenhove-Kalergi (16 November 1894 – 27 July 1972) was an Austrian-Japanese politician, philosopher and Count of Coudenhove-Kalergi. A pioneer of European integration, he served as the founding president of ...

References

{{Perfume Perfumes History of cosmetics Products introduced in 1919