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stenobent – :
I decided I needed to try Djedi: I have L’Heure Bleue on regular rotation, I adore Mitsouko, and my dream scent is L’apres L’ondee, so I thought it about time. I ordered a tiny sample from The Perfumed Court-it was advertised as the vintage version, not the anniversary release.
I tried the tiniest smear on the side of my wrist, not even a drop, just the smear from the plastic cap of the decant bottle. I’m pretty bad at picking up notes, but overall this fragrance creates a tableau in your imagination.
In my tableau: you’re in the woods trekking through dark, damp undergrowth. It starts to rain, and you come across an old tumbled down stone ruin. You take shelter from the rain, noting as you do that other animals have been there, going by the vaguely urinous and faecal scents wafting. You build a fire: the wood crackles and burns, filling the ruin with dry smoke. Some of the wood you found must have been from a fence, because you can smell chemicals, pitch, tar, creosote. After about an hour, you no longer notice the urine smell. The cold stone is starting to warm up releasing a powdery granite hint. There is a window without glass in the ruin, and outside there is an old rambling rose bush with a few late blossoms. As the sun comes out, you catch the merest wisp of rose fragrance rising from the fading petals, just about peeking through the ash and cold smoke.
Cold, sad, melancholy fragrance. Different. Unique. Not pleasant.
Rikekayallbem – :
Oh, I really want so much to have the chance of testing the actual Djedi. All the Ancient Egyptian inspired things are very appealing to me, and the first Guerlains were pieces of art.
Although as a matter of fact, I didn’t know that this perfume was inspired by the Ancient Egypt (I have even read that the first formulations had actual mummy balm among their ingredients :O, I wonder if that was true). Although, considering the name of the perfume, this makes some sense. Djedi was a powerful and wise magician, the main character in the ancient Egyptian tale The King Khufu and the Magicians. He foretells the future of the King Khufu (yes, the man who ordered the building of the Great Pyramid), and makes several miraculous deeds, like to turn a lion into a tame animal and resurect a dead goose.
I am pretty sure this must be something dark, thick, misterious, incredibly long lasting. Resins, animalic notes, woods and smoke. The kind of perfume that it is not made anylonger.
BeRKyT1972 – :
If you would like to experience vintage Djedi extrait, as well as Fol Arome extrait, Nombre Noir extrait and 100’s of others – join RARE PERFUME DECANTS, (a closed group) on facebook.
annaalexbanu01 – :
Having just come back from Paris after a fabulous weekend of pure olfactive indulgence; the highlight of which was the workshop at Guerlain HQ to sniff 32 discontinued masterpieces spanning from the beginning starting with Pois Des Senteur 1840 ending with Parure 1975. How five hours flew by I couldn’t recollect but seemed like it was only two hours 😀
Whilst trying out these thirtytwo masterpieces I was privileged enough to try the legendary Djedi!
The composition I tried was however a reconstruction by Thierry Wasser and dated 2014 and according to Guerlain contained the following ingredients which is also reflective of the what was in the original 1926 version.
Aldehydes, muguet, bergamot,Jasmine, rose, Iris Vetiver, animalics, musk, Amber, oakmoss
I’ve waited with baited breath for this moment for the last five years and when it came I was not dissapointed! When the strip with the scent was handed to me by the lovely Françoise I quickly applied it on my skin before the alcohol dried…….It was what I expected and more!
From the very start to the very end I’ve got to say this composition was totally austere and sombre. If a dictator were to wear a fragrance this would be it! I literally felt like Napoleon!
It starts of with sharp aldehydes and clean muguet florals with spikes of sharp animalics and dryness poking through. It’s an amazing juxtaposition between cleanliness and decaying filth and totally avant garde for the period when it was released. Even for today’s standards this would be considered strange but I love it with my whole being!
Once this sharpness subsides one is left with a fuzzy warm Amber cushioned on a foundation of super dry oakmoss and civet …….the whole composition is still veiled with a light ethereal mix of muguet, Jasmine and rose. After 8-9 hours everything is a whisper but the telltale signature of oakmoss and other acrid dusty components could be felt for another ten hours. For the first eight hours this was a sillage bomb and the little spot that I applied could be smelt from an arms length however understandably so becomes a skin scent which lasts a very long time.
I forgot to add although Vero’s Onda is absolutely amazing and one of my favourites, to me it bears no resemblance to the Djedi I smelt at Guerlain HQ. It’s just totally unique
pickup – :
Ok, while I think Marwa.qoura took this a bit too personally/culturally (and she looks young so may not have considered expecting people from 100 years ago to have conformed to today’s ethical standards), I have to say, regarding the scent, I am on board.
I love Guerlain, especially the vintage juice when I can get it, but yerk!
Loving or hating a scent has some subjectivity, of course, and may depend on how it smells on you. I opened my itty bitty decant from the Perfumed Court and immediately thought, “what the heck?” It was awful. My mother has worn it so I had her smell and she said it was accurate, so I know it was not the sample.
I tried it on. I lasted an hour before I had to scrub. It nauseated me.
Given the historical context, I totally get why it was supposed to conjure thoughts of Egypt. On me it smells funereal–oils and spices and sand and time and decay. So much decay.
I like the notes, so this should have been a slam dunk. This is something I strongly urge you get a small small sample of and wear for a bit before you hunt for a bigger (and pricier) score.
For me, this is my second great Guerlain failure. I think I am one of 3 people in the world who can’t wear Shalimar. I love it on others and in the bottle, so I know in that case the problem is me–maybe in this case as well 🙁
fuad476 – :
Djedi review, part two: Who Djedi Is
Djedi was born in a different time, daughter of a different way of life. She is part of a generation putting itself together in the aftermath of total war, a lost generation of men, and women who rejected the Victorian conventions of dress and morality that had stunted their lives and their social and physical freedoms.
These women cut off their hair. Bobby pin factories went bankrupt overnight! They wore short, loose dresses and cloche hats. They drank and smoked in public and they demanded and mostly received the right to vote. They took their places in institutions of higher learning.
They stopped wanting to smell like flowers. How could any soliflore express who these women were?
1919, Tabac Blond.
1921, Chanel #5.
1924, My Sin.
And 1927, Djedi.
Djedi is thrilling and powerful and so strange, something new under the sun that was inspired by something the sun had not seen in millenia: the tomb of Tutankhamun, opened in 1922; and as such, Djedi is escapism and endurance together, made for a generation of women who knew in their hearts that the fighting was not over-that it had just begun. And so they made hay while the sun shined. They marshalled their stregnth, and in cultivating their persons they fortified their souls for what was to come.
If I am not mistaken, Djedi was discontinued in the 1950s, a time when people embraced the bomb, and better living through chemistry, and plastic, with all its implications. They tried so hard for normalcy and enforced it so fiercely. They kept different secrets.
Djedi is courage with the stregnth to back it up, raw, determined, unbowed.
goff1987 – :
Djedi review, part one: How It Smells
This is another vintage perfume that went on to my skin oily; again I assume that it is so old that much of the alcohol has evaporated. Fine with me. Down to business!
I wore my precious sample for several days, during the course of a few weeks, to take the best notes I could, and finally decided that the civet is the winner when it comes to opening notes. It’s a near thing: the other way I could describe it is as a deeply and darkly honeyed rose. Rose there certainly is, in abundance, and the divide between honey and civet seems to be a single breath one way or the other. So imagine that bees are mammals in all their scruffy, musky, raunchy glory, and picture a worker bee, hot and tired from its day’s labor, crawling along a rose in the perfection of its blooming, and you have not only the opening of Djedi but its heart and soul.
There’s musk and oakmoss and powder in the dry down, but for as long as you can still smell Djedi (and how I wish it was longer), the dominant impression is of earth and rose and civet. It is glorious. I would wear this for every anniversary, every night out if I could.
You can be a different woman when you wear Djedi. Which brings me to part two of my review.
kainkhv – :
Mr Guerlain could have created his art as much as he wanted and calling it “Death ” or something of the sort , but that wasn’t nice associating it with the history of my country and its civilisation ..for the sake of “art” and making money as well …Life is what creates art , not death …
WihqWQ – :
Honestly. This wasn’t as doom and gloom as I expected it to be based on the reviews. It actually smells quite pleasant! It is not a happy scent…It’s quite cold but also it wasn’t the ultimate non sweet scent that people claimed it was. I quite like it and would definitely purchase it if it was a currently available fragrance. Coldish, dark, yet not too opaque nor transparent, a great balance of animalics, moss and woods…not just ordinary wood and moss but one from a dark mysterious, abandoned forest un-touched by man for centuries. Or to think of it as tomb air from the depths of a pyramid, that will do as well.
zakonodatel1 – :
My 3ml decant just came in, and I couldn’t have been more excited to gingerly tear the package open! I was terrified, because today is the hottest day I’ve experienced in my city so far this year, and the thought of having such a precious vial of fluid traveling all this way in this heat..
But rest assured, the fragrance is undamaged [as less as possible for such an old fragrance].
It’s… interesting. It’s not what I was expecting at all from the reviews, but then again, we’re bound to experience different results depending on how our individual vials and flacons have been handled. We’ll never experience Djedi as it was meant to be experience, since Guerlain only cares about smelling like candy and suntan lotion anymore.
For me, this is truly nothing but unadulterated oak moss. There’s a decent dose of vetiver and musk there as well, and an odd sweetness that I can’t quite wrap my head around. I think it has something to do with the rose note, but it keeps making me think of some sort of syrup..like maple or cane syrup.
It’s most definitely dark, but not at all musty to me. It’s a very beautiful, deep chypre that has quite a sensual edge to it. I’m slightly disappointed that it doesn’t evoke any sort of Egyptian reference, but I’m still very pleased to have such an interesting, rare fragrance in my collection. The 3ml decant is small, but I intend on maintaining it and treasuring it for as long as possible!
Judging by the longevity I’m getting, I’ll be okay. It lasts about 1.5 to 3 hours on me. Understandable. Sillage is noticeable, but it’s mostly that odd syrupy sweetness that manages to carry.
This was most definitely the precursor to Mitsouko. Mitsouko is basically a more full-bodied version of Djedi, to my nose.
Сусел – :
I have been trying to find Djedi for a very long time, and am sitting here with a huge smile on my face….self satisfied and happy that I am wearing a clone in the beautiful Onda from Vero Profumo so very well described above …it could be Djedi!!
Katahira1987 – :
Doc Elly’s review for Djedi is perfect. I have about half left of a 5 ml decant I nabbed on ebay a couple of years ago. Still wondering how THAT happened. Because it’s so rare, I don’t wear it that often, but I also don’t want to let it sit until it eventually evaporates, so I wear it on occasion, like today. It opens with a kind of cold, strange medicinal note which is eventually softened by a note of dried roses. Shortly after the big vetiver note takes over and I start to see some similarities between Djedi and Guerlain’s vintage Vetiver, but also Vero Profomo’s Onda. But where Onda has a sunny/meaty vetiver, Djedi’s vetiver is slightly powdery and dry. Both Djedi and Onda are scents that are difficult to articulate. I don’t get leather at all or anything animalic, and like Doc said, Djedi is one of those scents that’s more about describing an “experience”. Personally, I experience a sense of melancholy as if I’m longing for something, like a time or a person from the past that I can’t quite put my finger on, but the feeling is deep in my gut and whatever it is stays just outside of my peripheral vision. A weird, recurring experience that happens everytime I wear Djedi and I love it even though it’s unsettling.
Laciss – :
Most people think the Jedi order of Star Wars was a fictional order created by George Lucas from his fertile imagination. Actually, Lucas based it on the Djedi, an ancient order of Egyptian priest/warriors who wore hooded robes, carried a staff of power and guarded the pharaoh. The secret techniques and knowledge of the “Force” taught to these Egyptian Djedi were passed down from Atlantis by Thoth (aka Hermes and Mercury)- one of the priest-kings of Atlantis who sailed to colonies in Egypt, Peru and and elsewhere before the sinking of Atlantis in order to preserve the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of that great society. But in order to ensure that it would not be misused again, it was kept secret and only revealed to select initiates.
The name Djed contains the root word “Dj” meaning Serpent. this root word can be found in Dj-huti (Thoth/Hermes), Dj-inn (better known in the west as a Genie) and Djedi (An Egyptian Magician).
Thoth taught divine alchemy, which wasn’t a technique to change lead into gold, but a means of turning the dense human consciousness into the golden consciousness of an enlightened master. The symbol of alchemy is the caduceus, which Mercury is shown holding in statues and paintings. It consists of a staff with two intertwining serpents, crowned with wings. The staff is the spinal column, the two serpents are the balanced masculine and feminine energies of the kundalini, and the wings symbolize the higher consciousness that frees the mind once the kundalini is raised from the base of the spine chakra to the crown chakra. Through this alchemy, a Djedi could awaken the sleeping kundalini power (Force) and raise it to the head where it would manifest as supernatural powers and intuitive gnostic wisdom. Since the Dj in Djedi means “serpent, a Djedi master was one who had mastered the serpent power.
kolyany491 – :
This might be the most unusual and interesting perfume I have ever smelled. It does have an intense animalic smell, also dry and dusty, but there is also a faint floral note. It’s not pretty but it is majestic and a little brutal. The most amazingly long lasting fragrance I have ever tried. I can’t stop sniffing it when I have it on. When I am not wearing it, I can’t stop thinking about it. It smells like an ancient secret. It would probably smell great on a man as well. A masterpiece. What a shame it is discontinued. I will hoard my sample like the precious treasure it is.
Cosin – :
I am from Egypt & it’s my first time to hear about this perfume …Well , I don’t really understand why Guerlain used civet so intensly in such perfume …First , it’s not ethical & harsh ..Second Ancient Egyptians never used civet in their perfumes !! ..It’s not a known animal in Egypt , it’s exclusive to East Asia !…and they didn’t like stinky or dusty smells , they usually used florals like lotus or roses , specially Taif rose which is very well known here as “Ward Baladi”…I understand why this perfume was a flop .. Judging from the notes & reviews ,it’s dust & old tombs stink , not a perfume …Please don’t associate that with Egypt as it smells nothing like the real country I live in… A green sort of scent would have been more appropriate …
mureMoffnerce – :
I’ve sampled lots animalic perfumes including MKK, Yatagan, CB Musk reinvention, Musc Tonkin, and the infamous Untitled No. 8, and Djedi is the only one I’d describe as smelling somewhat fecal, just for the duration of the opening, though.
Djedi’s opening is unlike any other perfume I’ve smelled, probably because of the presence of real civet and musk in its composition. It’s dry, animalic, woody, musty, sweaty, raw, and almost mouldy smelling. It’s a scent somewhere between “fecal” and “fungal”.
After the unpleasant opening it dries down into a sweet and spicy, woodsy fragrance with a “dirty” animalic base. There’s a persistent butter/caramel note in here too that reminds me a bit of maple syrup.
To be honest, it smells like a pecan pie or pumpkin spice Yankee Candle to me, just woodier and dirtier.
sanser11 – :
there is an unopened bottle of the 1996 version on ebay. 4 days to go. Up to $207 last time I looked. It’s freaking me out.
VADI14 – :
Oh, man. I am fixated on this now that I realize it exists. I would love to watch Dr. Phibes Rises Again while wearing. The mixture of camp and ancient Egypt is an intoxicating theme. Ground mummy dust was apparently used in medicines for a long time…no doubt it was faked mostly but whatever authentic “salvatory of green mummy” mentioned in the Duchess of Malfi–I like to think it smelled how this is described. There was also brown mummy, a color of paint that apparently really did contain mummy and the possibly authentic mummy paper made from the wrapping. Looking at photos of the excavation of Tut’s tomb, it’s easy to form an idea of the odor, exciting but maybe not entirely pleasant. Still a lot of rhythm in those rockin’ bones.
faraon777 – :
I’m sorry I cannot even test these old Guerlain where I live. I would like to sniff it maybe once for sniffing sake. Everything ancient Egyptian is very appealing for me.
I like animalic notes in tiny amounts, not the style of heavy animalic from ’20s.
Nowadays they would smell too strong.
Together with floral essential oils also animalic notes have became too expensive and not possible to use in perfumes on large scale.
In these days only synthetical fixative are used.
This is good for animals that often went through painful torture to make a perfume. This is very cruel.
Less good for quality and projection of perfumes and probably for our health, too, because synthetical stuff is no better for our nervous system.
vladuka – :
This perfume was created in the 1920s and reissued for a brief time in 1996. What I have is a tiny sample of the original 1926 version. The opening is strongly animalic and musty with just enough residue of spicy and floral top notes to keep it from being fecal-smelling. There’s real civet in enormous quantity, there’s earthy, dusty vetiver, and there’s just the slightest hint of cinnamon and spices.
If I’m not mistaken, the note that so many people smell and comment on as odd, unfamiliar, mineral, death-like, dry, sinister and the like is an unusually fine calamus, which would be perfectly in keeping with the Egyptian theme. Combine it with real, high-quality orris root, and you have the genie in the tomb.
I would not want to debunk anyone else’s magical and spiritual experience by overthinking, but I suspect that the strange and other-worldly opening of vintage Djedi is due to the fact that it’s so old that it’s lost most of its top notes and what we smell initially is a premature and unintended peek at the base. Whether intended or not, it certainly works its magic.
About an hour into the drydown, the sweeter, slightly powdery, slightly spicy, floral chypre notes start to appear. There are dried roses, iris, a touch of real sandalwood (foreshadowing Samsara), a touch of patchouli, a touch of real oakmoss, and, of course, the powerful vetiver-calamus-civet base underlying it all. I can see how people perceive Djedi as containing leather, since there’s the right combination of powdery and animalic notes to produce the illusion of leather if you’re looking for it.
A reviewer on Basenotes observed that most people describe Djedi in terms of an experience, not a fragrance, and I would concur that it is highly evocative of the unknown. Although a very different scent, my experience of Djedi was in some ways similar to that evoked by Judith Muller’s Bat-Sheba, another vintage perfume that seemed to have lost its top notes and produced the impression of a tomb-like environment or archaeological dig.
If you ever get a chance to try Djedi, do so!
ybd657Negeltzex – :
Its 1926. Howard Carter had discovered King Tuts tomb a few years earlier, creating a fascination with Egypt. Jacques Guerlain launched now legendary Djedi. I was lucky enough to find a decant of it. It is perfume extract to be certain, as one drop last for 18 hours!
How can I describe it? Musty and dusty. Mummy dust and embalming herbs. Rarely does a compostition open with vetiver and oakmoss. Did I mention civet? It is one of the top notes! There is almost a caramel heart that I cannot describe. The rose is hidden so deeply that I dont pick it up at all. Its quite linear and somber…
It is reminds me of Shalimar. With all of the similarites the biggest difference is its dry smokiness that is distinctly masculine.
Its history is strange as the perfume. It was never really popular to the large market. Its disappeared for a time and was relaunched in 1996 in a limited edition. Now with the oakmoss and civet controversy, I doubt Djedi will ever resurface. I have a decant that reaches across time-Thanks, Natalie!