Guerlain’s Occult Noire Phase

From the 1920s to the late 1940s, the French perfume house Guerlain rolled out the most extraordinary array of occult-themed advertising art.

What’s more, the flagrantly esoteric imagery sold fragrance and cosmetic like nobody’s business. I’ve posted a few here but there are more, of course. Art Deco often drew on mythology, but these are beyond.

For instance, the Loki-like image above and the Anubis figure alongside the woman in the Shalimar face powder image. Vega is not only an ultra-iconic star and subject of alt-physics conspiracy theories, but an ancient Mesopotamian goddess who some say served as the inspo for the Statue of Liberty.

I can’t figure out which scent the woman on the flying horse is advertising – descriptions of the image just say “Guerlain flying horse perfume” but there was never a scent called “Flying Horse” – not even in French. It does, however, evoke Eos, the Titan Dawn Goddess and then you can see that the L’Heure Bleu ad evokes Apollo.

Weirdly, it was all done by an artist about whom I can find NO information.  Credited variously as Elise Darcy, Lyse Darcy and Jacques Darcy, the person has no biographical info. So either my research skills have slumped or there is something more to this.

The head of Guerlain for this period was a Libran with Neptune conjunct the North Node in Aries, which would incline one toward magic. But Jacques Guerlain ostensibly had interests more or less in line with a stupendously wealthy and artistic man of his era.

He did say that had an awful premonition of World War 1 and that it inspired L’Heure Bleu: “I could not put into words this emotion, I wanted to capture these last moments of beauty and calm before calamity and war. I felt something so intense, that I could only express it in a perfume.”  

Or was he just a canny businessman who decided that edgier, on-trend surreal images would retain their market lead? Whatever, the information on this amazing artist makes me think that the name may have been a pseudonym for a better known one but if so, who?

I did reach out to Guerlain but I don’t anticipate a useful response. If anyone has more information, please share in the comments!