Ck One: Calvin Klein's unisex fragrance Calvin Klein is a house that has always shown profound audacity combined with an almost innate sense of business development strategy. Thus, the launch of CK One came with colossal resources! The success of this campaign exceeded all of the house's expectations and earned it the Grand Prix des Trophées Stratégie du Marketing the following year.
The Calvin Klein house took its first steps in perfumery with the sultry and very sensual Obsession, yet it was with the very fresh Ck One that glory arrived, a few years later. It must be said that Ck One truly had everything going for it: a very trendy communication campaign, a unisex image in tune with the times, but above all an original and pared-down fragrant composition. How did Alberto Morillas and Harry Frémont manage to compose this totally revolutionary Ck One, which achieved worldwide success?
Ck One or the art of reconciling innovation with a return to the roots of Cologne
The 1980s and their powerful, opulent fragrances, strongly marked either by sensual femininity or heightened virility, gradually disappeared from shelves to make way for the 1990s and their beautiful marine or floral freshness. L'Eau d'Issey opened this very natural chapter, Eternity by Calvin Klein moved in that direction, and Ck One would not only continue along this path but also add the androgynous and innovative touch of the moment that would make it a cult fragrance.
Indeed, the Calvin Klein house wanted not only to create a unisex fragrance to match the lifestyle of the time but also, according to Alberto Morillas, wanted a new freshness, a new Cologne, universal, something different. The gamble was risky because the fragrance was aimed above all at an American audience who saw citrus scents much more as the smell of a household product than as a fragrance…
But Alberto Morillas, a perfumer in love with retro Colognes, and Harry Frémont, a nose drawn to constant innovation, joined forces to offer a Ck One as fresh as it was sensual, as floral as it was masculine or feminine. Americans and Europeans alike were won over, and the whole world adopted this fragrance of many faces.
Between sensuality and beautiful freshness, Ck One the “false fresh”
CK One is a false fresh, it reveals after a while a hidden sensuality with notes of musk, amber and sandalwood. Creating a freshness that lasts is one of the keys to its success, attributed to Harry Frémont, 20 Minutes, speaking about Ck One.
Indeed, not only did the perfumers have the idea of using cutting-edge ingredients for Ck One such as hedione hc, but they also had the good idea of composing Ck One around three complementary yet distinct axes: freshness, flowers, and sensuality. Bergamot, lemon, and mandarin are thus enhanced by the famous hedione note. But the heart's flowers offer a most delicate feminine aspect to this unisex fragrance, exhaling jasmine, rose, lily of the valley, and iris. Finally, the woody depths of Ck One bring their touch of sensual mystery, a touch that definitively modernizes this citrus-floral base, turning it not into an Eau de Cologne but into a fragrance at the cutting edge of fashion.
Regarding Ck One's incredible success, Harry Frémont explained simply that Calvin Klein was reinventing fragrance by simplifying it.