Florabotanica photo TSF

Under the artistic tenure of Nicolas Ghesquière, Balenciaga launched a trio of scents I really liked, Balenciaga Paris, Balenciaga L’Essence and the outlandish Florabotanica. All three had oddness and the unexpected in their DNA, metals, grey skies, muted powders, melancholia, fairy-tale flora and the beauty of innate, rather reserved style. L’Essence was a glorious and shrouded violet with a hint of mourning in its leafy sensuality. I wear Florabotanica all the time; I love the offbeat style of Olivier Polge and Jean-Christophe Herault’s composition. In September 2102, I described it as it as ‘a strange mix of rubbed herb and floral tones (that) make the opening quite arresting … focuses the mind on the twisted floral doodlings of what is to come’.

Alexander Wang  Creative Director for Balenciaga

It still enchants me. I find oddness in it every time I wear it and some strange comfort. This feeling of strangeness returned as I bought a bottle of the latest launch, B. Balenciaga. This is the first fragrance under the tenure of American designer Alexander Wang, who took over at Balenciaga in 2012 after the disconcerting departure of Nicolas Ghesquière. Wang has apparently been working on the details of B. Balenciaga since he took over. Ghesquière stamped a very distinctive image on Balenciaga during his time there; it was hard to imagine one without the other.

Lily of the Valley Fashion Magazine

B. Balenciaga was made by Senior Perfumer Domitille Bertier of IFF who co-authored the vastly under rated Midnight in Paris for Van Cleef & Arpels with Olivier Polge and mega meringue monster Flowerbomb by Viktor & Rolf with Carlos Benaim and Polge again. Apparently one of Alexander Wang’s favourite notes in perfumery is lily of the valley and so B. Balenciaga opens with a crystal clear muguet note; you can almost hear the little bells shaking their tiny green stuff in mulchy meadows. 

Balenciaga Ad Campaign Photographed by Steven Klein featuring Daria Werbowy

This note is paired with a passive aggressive violet leaf facet and then the weird and much vaunted edamame pea accord. This is actually quite noticeable. Gimmicky? Perhaps. But it works incredibly well, adding a delicious vegetal aroma that rises and falls throughout the duration of the scent’s development. The heart is a simple marriage of cedar and orris, both dry and whispered in this particular incarnation. The orris smells oddly sugared, like icing sugar, dusted over the leafy salad of legume and muguet.

Gisele Bundchen for Balenciaga Fall Winter 2014-2015 Photographed by Steven Klein

It takes a while to pick up on the eccentricity of Bertier’s mix; in the meantime, ambrette and cashmeran provide both stability and tremendous warmth to what could have an overtly sterile exercise in aroma construction. I do pick out echoes of two other scents in the kinks of B. Balenciaga. One is the stardust singularity of The Unicorn Spell by Les Nez, a freaky mix of frozen violet and glittering menace. I hate it, but find myself repeatedly drawn to the bottle I have sitting in the darkness. The other is the Martin Margiela’s galbanum drenched Untitled, a suspiciously caprine essay in verdancy that frankly stunned me with its tsunami of green. The final strange hothouse fade of B. Balenciaga is subtle and perfect, the white musks helping to smooth the herbage into silence.

Photo of B Baleciaga Bottle by TSF

I guess you could say B. Balenciaga is a minimalist anti-floral. The juice is housed in a lovely frosted flacon inspired by the marble floor in the flagship Balenciaga salon at 10A Avenue George V in Paris. Along with Bottega Veneta’s lovely Knot and Francis Kurkdjian’s sexy My Burberry, B. Balenciaga is another welcome example of how big budget fashion houses can occasionally produce left field perfumed work of great delicacy and complexity. Don’t get me wrong, this is high street perfumery, but produced with grace and an understanding of artisan difference. I have smelled so much poor quality niche and artisanal scent recently, wrapped up in verbal arrogance and empty showmanship, it is a relief to wear mainstream scents of such coded, collected elegance.

  Disclosure – From my own collection

–The Silver Fox, Sr Editor and Editor of The Silver Fox