Ivoire

Ivoire de Balmain was born in 1979. The house credits Pierre Balmain with the origin of its name, which he called the name he gave to a dream: that of a woman of sovereign beauty, draped in very pale silk, glimpsed for an instant on the staircase of the Opéra before she vanished into the night.

The 2012 rewrite

In 2012, Balmain brought Ivoire back to the fore. The house’s fashion was then enjoying a new momentum under Olivier Rousteing, and the perfume had to speak to the Balmain woman of the moment, whom the house wanted elegant, demanding, sharp and sexy.

The rewrite was entrusted to Michel Almairac and Jacques Flori, perfumers at Robertet. They say they wanted to dust off the formula without betraying it, mainly by reworking the top, which was heavily aldehydic in the original version. The new Ivoire came out in the summer of 2012, as an eau de parfum.

One name, three perfumes

The 2012 Ivoire is no longer sold. In 2024, Balmain Beauty, the fragrance division the house launched under license to Estée Lauder, took up the name in its Les Éternels collection for an entirely different perfume: a unisex eau de parfum built on tubéreuse de nuit and vetiver.

This 2024 Ivoire is another perfume. The house presents it as a woody floral, opening on grapefruit and resting on turmeric, said to carry the legacy of its New French Style and the optimism of today’s Paris.