Ivoire is the 2012 version of the perfume Balmain launched in 1979. Michel Almairac and Jacques Flori, perfumers at Robertet, lightened its aldehydic top without losing its spirit. Mandarin, galbanum and violet leaf open onto rose, jasmine, iris and ylang-ylang, resting on vetiver, cedar, patchouli and vanilla: a green floral chypre, brighter than its predecessor.
Victoria Frolova greatly likes this facelift, brighter and lighter than the original; John Reasinger hails a striking homage that nonetheless lacks the depth of 1979; Céline Verleure finds in it the soft cocoon of Ivoire.
Olfastory’s review
Bois de Jasmin, September 2013
Victoria Frolova speaks of a major facelift: the original’s aldehydes and peppery stems are gone, and the patchouli has softened. She likes its green note, its touches of orange blossom, its polished base of cedar and moss, and reads the whole more as a chypre.
Brighter, and lighter too, than the 1979 Ivoire, the 2012 one pleases her greatly for the effervescence of its leafy notes and the elegance of its floral accents. She finds it slimmed down, like the model in its campaign, and gives it four stars.
ÇaFleurBon, November 2012
John Reasinger, who compared it with an old bottle of the 1979 eau de toilette, sees in the 2012 Ivoire a crisp, striking homage. To him it does justice to the original while stripping away its complexity and texture, and keeps its elegant aura.
Where the original was, to him, an oil painting, the new version is a computer-generated image: beautiful, technically almost perfect, yet lacking the depth and distinctiveness of 1979. He nonetheless remains impressed by this reformulation.
Osmoz, October 2012
Céline Verleure, founder of Olfactive Studio, finds the rewrite successful: she recognizes the soft cocoon of the old Ivoire, a luxury soap with a very clean note, for a classic woman. The advertising, however, strikes her as disembodied and heavily retouched, too close in her eyes to a Coco Mademoiselle campaign with Kate Moss.