Florabotanica, the fragrance by Balenciaga. If the alluring Kristen Stewart made herself much talked about as an actress in the Twilight trilogy, it seems that the house of Balenciaga also found a role perfectly suited to her: that of ambassador. Moreover, she embodied, in 2012, the alluring perfume Florabotanica.
The couture house Balenciaga stands out particularly for a classic style regularly revisited with a bold and original twist. Until Florabotanica, Balenciaga perfumes had instead rather displayed the house's classicism. But Nicolas Ghesquière, the brand's artistic director, decided otherwise and propelled the phantasmagorical composition by Olivier Polge and Jean-Christophe Hérault into a world all its own. Florabotanica strikes a discordant, astonishing note…
Balenciaga Florabotanica, a science-fiction perfume signed Olivier Polge and Jean-Christophe Hérault
With Balenciaga Paris in 2010, Nicolas Ghesquière had steered Balenciaga perfumery toward the historic and classic olfactory testimony of the brand's values. Violets, flowers and sensual woody touches dressed the elegant and sophisticated Balenciaga woman. With Florabotanica, Balenciaga's colorful artistic director sought far more to astonish and to distinguish himself through an original perfumed creation, notably built, a rare thing in perfumery, around a fantastical tale. For the pretty floral scent of a new world would be the product of a tailor who threw his sketches to the ground so that flowers might spring from them in spring… The story is magical, and the perfume will be just as much so!
It is true that the first perfume, launched two years ago, embodied the house in a heritage spirit. With Florabotanica, I was looking for something more narrative, a story in itself, like the ones I tell myself while designing my clothes, confides Ghesquière. Madame Le Figaro on Florabotanica by Balenciaga.
Thus Florabotanica reveals itself as a fantastical perfumed tale under the aegis of the talented noses Olivier Polge and Jean-Christophe Hérault. A choice entirely orchestrated by Nicolas Ghesquière because of the artistic affinities linking him to the two perfumers. Moreover, the latter went so far as to create their own ingredients in order to offer a Florabotanica that seemed to come from the future, all the better to bewitch us.
A hybrid rose for the perfume Florabotanica in its extraordinary garden…
Just by looking at the bottle, Florabotanica of course evokes research and laboratory work, which gives it the air of a perfume from the future, while also reminding us that the flowers grown within its bottle indeed come from meticulous work by the perfumers.
Indeed, the composition of Florabotanica is particularly centered on the work of an absolutely unknown rose, a rose that, moreover, did not exist before this perfume. This rose, which Olivier Polge and Jean-Christophe Hérault chose to name Experimental Rose, is the central point around which the other ingredients come to settle, notably in order to affirm its freshness and delicacy.
Thus mint opens Florabotanica at the top with a breath of freshness that is extended by the famous rose, so enigmatic and so emblematic in the heart. A rare thing, the rose is then worked in its warmest facets but also its most vivid ones, pairing with novel scents of geranium and carnation. Finally, woody depths play at creating a bit more mystery in this original perfume, all while marrying with the touch of violet emblematic of Balenciaga perfumes.
Florabotanica is a strange and wonderful garden, and one cannot tell whether its flowers are naive or poisonous. Balenciaga on Florabotanica.