I was not a huge fan of Florabotanica, the last pillar fragrance from Balenciaga, but I do sometimes like a flanker better than the original fragrance so I doggedly persist in trying them, and that’s especially true when I adore the bottle. And I did adore the Florabotanica bottle. I love the bottle for Rosabotanica, the new flanker, even more.

Florabotanica was a modern, clean, office-friendly floral, or as I put it when I reviewed it, “a modern, shampoo-ish blended-floral style several steps removed from the actual flowers”. It was essentially loud (in the early stages, anyway) without any depth or richness. Rosabotanica is advertised as “unveil[ing] a fresher territory, with a sheer, enveloping second skin character”, and yep, that’s pretty much how it works out.

Rosabotanica, then, takes the sillage of the opening down a notch, but it also spices things up a bit…

Read the rest of this article »