Balenciaga – Florabotanica

One of my main issues with modern perfumery is the manner in which fragrances are penned by a team of market “specialists”, only to be translated into a fragrance which often bears little or no relation to its official description.  Florabotanica, released by the house of Balenciaga (in collaboration with IFF) in late 2012, is one of the best recent examples of this phenomena. The fragrance’s tagline is below.

“Florabotanica evokes ambivalent bewitching beauty. Velvety and thorny, flirting with hemp and vetiver roots. The scent is flowery, developed on a rose note with a narcotic hemp twist. The wearer is beautiful but dangerous, like some rare botanical species.”

I will admit to having no idea what the foregoing means, or what the perfume was intended to smell like. How does one go about “flirting with hemp”? What does something dangerous smell like? Fear? I can only imagine the expressions on the faces of Olivier Polge and Jean-Christophe Herault, the noses behind this fragrance, when they were presented with the brief for Florabotanica.

While Messrs. Polge and Herault succeeded in making a nice-enough fragrance, Florabotanica is none of those things. The fragrance opens with a slightly spicy green note that quickly turns minty. Not quite a gum-smacking variety, more of a soft, pale mint that is closer to a mint herbal tea.  As the heart opens, the fragrance reveals itself to be more truly a floral, though the rose and carnation at the heart of Florabotanica are fairly one dimensional versions of these two powerhouse flowers. They almost smell like a cardboard pop-up of the advertisement with Kristen Stewart.

At the base of the fragrance is a melange of caladium leaves, amber and vetiver, which is where I expected the danger to lie, since my research revealed the caladium plant to be poisonous. Quite to the contrary,  these three notes in unison produced a slightly soapy, light chocolate effect on my skin, giving the creation a bit of softness and warmth. These notes nicely offset the flat, powdery florals, making for a pretty-enough fragrance, but nothing particularly “bewitching” or “thorny”.  Certainly not “dangerous”. While I like Florabotanica well enough, I might have had a greater appreciation of it were it not for the bizarre expectations set by the marketing line.  Probably the edgiest thing about the fragrance is the unique flacon it comes in, but for me, the design bore no relation to the scent either.

Floral

Notes: notes: Mint, rose, carnation, caladium leaf, vetiver and amber