FlowerbyKenzo: the Original and the Essentielle

Of all the mainstream houses, Kenzo is probably the one that’s been putting out the most consistent, and consistently interesting line. Jungle, Amour and Flower are contemporary classics; their flankers are often improvements on the original idea rather than callous exploitations of the notoriety of their best-sellers. FlowerbyKenzo Essentielle is a good case in point. As I’ve never reviewed the original, I’ll take that as a springboard to speak about its latest incarnation.

Of course, the original Flower only deserves its name in the most symbolic fashion.

“Nature re-stakes its claim on urban scenery”, claims the Kenzo website. But nature has nothing to do with it. The poppy chosen for the bottle and Kenzo’s spectacular promotional operations (planting urban swathes with crimson blossoms for a day) is notoriously scentless. And FlowerbyKenzo doesn’t smell like any known flower or even like some Platonic ideal of a flower. In fact, the name seems mostly meant to conjure the idea of this-smells-pretty: because flowers smell pretty, that’s something we can all agree on. And Flower is pretty, almost unbearably so.

Not for Flower, the slavering maw of Nature and her complex, disturbing smells. This is an abstract, man-made scent, and a conceptual tour-de-force. Flower is unique, yet it manages to smell like a pared-down, photo-shopped, composite image of practically every wistful, powdery, violet-laden perfume descended from Guerlain’s iconic L’Heure Bleue. It plays on the nostalgic, regressive notes (rose, vanilla, the cool anise-like heliotropin) of granny’s lipstick and childhood treats, but it doesn’t have a mawkish molecule in its delicate body. This is L’Heure Bleue without the blues and without a story: a huge, radiant, essentially static aura – relaxing mood music to its ancestor’s Debussy sonata. Its haze of musk (Flower contains an overdose of Firmenich’s Muscenone, which is particularly powdery) may be feminine, but in a cleverly de-sexualized way. Flower resets the calendar to an idealized age of innocence; its sensuousness doesn’t demand sticky commitment.

By contrast, Essentielle puts the flowers back in the bottle – and the most classical flowers of perfumery at that: rose and jasmine.

But far from making the composition heftier, the translucent rose – not un-reminiscent of the rose note featured in Chanel N°5 Eau Première and Narciso Rodriguez Essence – cuts through the original Flower’s violet-heliotropin-musk haze and suffuses it with a dewy light which shines well into the dry down. Better still, its sets it in motion. Where Flower was almost still, Flower Essentielle runs through a more traditional evolution, from the lemon-tinged freshness of the (discretely) aldehydic overture – the most delicious moment, in my opinion – to the rose-jasmine heart, barely darkened by a shade of incense, which shimmers through to the impalpable musk and vanilla base.

And while Flower remains as serenely inscrutable as a digital-age Mona Lisa, Essentielle ventures an enticing smile.

Image: Irving Penn, Single Oriental Poppy (1965)