Gucci’s 2013 green fougère flanker of Guilty Pour Homme: lavender, coriander and orange blossom over cedar and patchouli.
At a glance
Guilty Black Pour Homme is a 2013 flanker of Gucci’s Guilty Pour Homme, sold as an eau de toilette. It is a green aromatic fougère: lavender and coriander over orange blossom and neroli, drying down to cedar and patchouli.
It keeps the lavender-and-orange-blossom idea of the 2011 original but pushes it greener and drier, and it has outlasted most of the Guilty flankers of its time.
Creation and context
Fragrantica and Parfumo both date Guilty Black Pour Homme to 2013. It arrived two years after Guilty Pour Homme, while Gucci’s fragrances were licensed to Procter & Gamble and Frida Giannini was the house’s creative director. Fragrantica also lists a Guilty Black Pour Femme from the same year, so the name covers a pair of fragrances rather than one.
Parfumo credits the composition to Jacques Huclier, the Givaudan perfumer behind the original Guilty Pour Homme and Thierry Mugler’s A*Men. Fragrantica does not name a perfumer, so treat the Huclier credit as Parfumo’s.
The advertising continued the Guilty story with the same two actors. Refinery29 reported in January 2013 that Chris Evans and Evan Rachel Wood fronted the Guilty Black campaign, shot in saturated red and green rather than black and white. According to Fragrantica, the campaign was directed by Frank Miller, who had made the first Guilty film in 2010, and photographed by Mert & Marcus. Fragrantica describes the Pour Homme bottle as the Guilty shape in black, with green accents that refer to Gucci’s web stripe.
The composition
Gucci has not published the formula. The structure below uses only the materials that Fragrantica and Parfumo both list.
Fragrantica adds green notes to the heart and describes the result as a “vital green fougère”. The Scented Devil’s review puts the difference from the original in similar terms: less sweetness, more coriander and neroli, a soapier and more aquatic middle, and heavier patchouli and cedar underneath. The shape is still recognisably Guilty, but it reads more mature and less sugary.
Why it matters
Guilty Black is part of the run of fresh, lightly sweet lavender-and-orange-blossom scents that followed Guilty Pour Homme in the early 2010s. The Scented Devil argues that the Guilty line started one of the main designer fragrance styles of that decade, a style that Paco Rabanne’s Invictus later made its own. Whatever weight you give that claim, Guilty Black shows how a designer house stretched one idea across several flankers.
According to The Scented Devil, Guilty Black became the best seller of the Procter & Gamble-era flankers and the only one that Coty kept in production after Alessandro Michele took over creative direction. Parfumo lists it as still marketed by Coty, now under the name Guilty Essence.
Reformulation and editions
The original release was an eau de toilette, with a Guilty Black Pour Femme alongside it. Parfumo now files the Pour Homme as “Guilty Essence / Guilty Black pour Homme”, and a Parfumo reviewer writing about the re-released Essence describes it as close to the original Guilty Black, fresher and greener than the discontinued Guilty Intense.
Gucci has not published a reformulation history. If you are comparing bottles, check whether the box says Guilty Black or Guilty Essence, and do not confuse either with Guilty Intense Pour Homme (2011) or the later eau de parfum and parfum versions of Guilty Pour Homme, which are separate compositions.
Wearing it today
Expect a green lavender-and-coriander opening, a soft orange-blossom and neroli heart, and a dry cedar-and-patchouli finish with a faint leathery edge. Parfumo users rate its longevity and sillage as moderate, so it suits the office, daytime and warm evenings.
Two or three sprays are enough. If you already own Guilty Pour Homme, wear the two side by side: the shared structure is easy to recognise, and so is Black’s greener, less sweet character.