Thierry Mugler will launch Les Exceptions / Mugler’s Exceptions, a new collection of five fragrances: Chyprissime, Supra Floral, Fougère Furieuse, Over The Musk and Oriental Express…
Karl Lagerfeld for Him & for Her ~ new fragrances
Karl Lagerfeld will launch Karl Lagerfeld for Him and Karl Lagerfeld for Her, his debut fragrances under new licensing arrangements with InterParfums. Lagerfeld’s license had previously been held by Coty (2008’s Karl Lagerfeld Kapsule, 2011’s Karleidoscope) and Elizabeth Arden (1994’s Sun Moon Stars, 2000’s Lagerfeld Femme, among others)…
Esprit Life by Esprit Summer Edition ~ new fragrances
Esprit will launch Life by Esprit Summer Edition, a new duo of flankers to 2003’s Esprit Life, in February. Life by Esprit Summer Edition follows 2008’s Dynamic Life, 2009’s Groovy Life and 2013’s Your Life…
Balenciaga Rosabotanica ~ perfume review
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…
Balenciaga Florabotanica ~ perfume review
Florabotanica is the latest from Balenciaga, and I was fully prepared to adore it for any number of reasons, not least being the presentation: I love the offbeat advertising images and that’s easily my favorite bottle of recent memory — and it’s one of those rare bottles that is even more alluring in person than in pictures (the minute I picked it up, I started calculating how much I had just spent on jeans and yoga pants and how much I could still spend that day without threatening the food budget). They brought back perfumer Olivier Polge, who developed 2010’s Balenciaga Paris, a fragrance that seemed an excellent start for the brand’s revival as a perfume house under the auspices of Coty. Florabotanica is a great name for a perfume, and I even love the design of the outer box. Designer Nicolas Ghesquière’s concept of a strange garden with beautiful flowers, but also dangerous flowers, sounded intriguing.1
The potential bad news was that it was geared younger than Balenciaga Paris; sorry, young ‘uns, but that usually — not always! — means some degree of dumbing down or fruiting up. That Florabotanica is fronted by actress Kristen Stewart means nothing to me either way; as usual, I had to google just to remember who she was, and don’t even ask me to comment on her recent “scandal”, I don’t know and I don’t care, and will only say that the increased publicity would seem a boon for Balenciaga. I found the very untraditional manner in which she is used in the advertising to be refreshing…