Reviews of FlowerbyKenzo (2000)
by Kenzo

Flower by Kenzo EDP and Parfum comparison

Left arm: Kenzo Flower EDP
Right arm: Kenzo Flower Parfum

Not sure if this was mentioned in previous reviews, but these seem to be 2 different fragrances, irrelevant of concentration.

On first spray, the EDP is a bit like play-do or latex rubber. It is not as "rubbery" as the latex note I get in Sarah Jessica Parker Covet or most of the Gaultiers, and it has quite a bit a fruit up front, sort of a peach-orange combination (nectarine?) along with a synthetic floral bouquet. Ok, ok, it is a fruity floral with some lactonic "milky" quality. Within 20-30 minutes, the sharpness of the fruit & flower softens to a bit of a soapy note, and is a little bit tart or sour. In fact, it is almost a plastic smell, or maybe a bit like old lipstick (sort of waxy). It reminds me of those dolls that have scented hair. Not bad, but if I had to base my decision to purchase on this one wearing, I would give it a pass.

The parfum initially has more emphasis on the latex note with less fruit, and is more powdery with what seems to be a light amber. I would not say it is significantly heavier or stronger than the EDP. Rather, it is more resinous and rich, maybe more of an evening scent. The florals are less bright in this one, probably tempered by the amber notes. Of the two scents, it has more of the same qualities of Kenzo Amour, which I love. Unlike Kenzo Amour, Kenzo Flower Parfum penetrates my senses gradually with softness. I find it more in the "Amour" family than the special edition Indian Holi (which basically smelled like Amour with red cinnamon candle wax). However, the amber notes are not stellar, and with the sourness of the fruit and floral wafting in an out, I am not sure this one is FBW either. Having said that, it is definitely the more enjoyable of the two!

Much later: Everything has dried down nicely...even the Kenzo Flower lost its dense waxyness to reveal a soft powdery floral underneath. Unfortunately I sensed hints of ammonia, darn it all, this aromachemical sensitivity!

I'm just starting out with perfumes, so maybe I'll come to appreciate this one more as I gain experience, but right now the powdery note isn't something that suits me very well. It dries down to something very like a marshmallow on me, which is a bit sweeter than I like my perfumes (YMMV).

I can definitely smell the rose in this one and the sweetness sticks for a long time. Not my thing but I don't particularly care for heavy florals. I tried it once as it was my roommates and she adored the scent. She was from Brazil and said many girls there wear it.

Starts out very promising, with a bright and uplifting opening, but quickly deteriorates into a fairly heavy, almost cloying, musty floral mish mash. Perhaps it's my lack of experience, but I have a hard time detecting individual notes. That would be okay if the fragrance was a 'symphonic floral' (to quote Luca Turin referring to 'Beyond Paradise'). Unfortunately, it's not. More like a poorly tuned high school band. Full on 'Meh!'

I have the EDP in the clear glass bottle with the poppy. That was scintillating enough to make me buy the parfum in hte red metal bottle which is divine. I love violets. I can't see a future without these perfumes, or one of them, in it. Both are more advertourous than Borsari's Violetta di Palma - the EDP more suggestive and playful, the parfum more sultry.

It is one of my favorite women’s perfume. I really like this scent.

I like the Le Parfum (red bottle) more than the lesser concentrations. Reminiscent of heliotrope (everlasting flower), the sweet quality of FbK smells like you've spilt the best baby powder next door to the best confectionary bakery. This is one of those sweet fragrances I love to encounter, but would weary of wearing.

I really like this scent. My first exposure to it was a roll-on EDP.
It smells sweet and warm and smells like summer to me.

Oh this a special one. It is a very charismatic and amassing scent.
It is one of my and my husband’s favorite women’s perfume.
It is an Oriental - Floral type of perfume. it smells very flowery.
you can rest assure that this perfume will last long. Suitable for special occasions
you might find it a little too strong at the beginning but later you will recognize how unique it is.

initially smells airy and light and sweet.
I bought the whole bottle after smelling the sample fragrance from sephora. I thought it would be a nice contrast from the heavy night time scents I own. To the contrary....I am nauseated now, I applied this in the morning and its not 8pm and the smell is still lingering. Polluting the air with its sickly sweetness that I cant scrub off. This calls for a shower.

Originally intending to buy the EdP, I decided instead to plump for the Le Parfum satin spray after reading glowing reviews of it here. We must be smelling a different product. Yuk! What a horror. "Satin" is about all they could call the consistency since it defies description; a slightly greasy look and feel; it certainly isn't perfume proper. It could pass for a perfumed deodorant. Probably as a result of its slightly gloopy texture, it has no depth or staying power at all; if my nose is more than a couple of inches away from my wrist, I can barely smell it. It dries to almost nothing and can be wiped off the wrist. Spraying it on my clothes, it fares slightly better but not much. The smell is thin and linear; it lacks all of the body, cleanliness, warmth and complexity (such as it is) and of the EdP and instead dries to a trickle of dirty, stale vanilla fudge. Basically, I smell as if I've been baking toffee cookies including the fetidity of kitchen silage. Yuk! Avoid unless you have money to burn. It is going back on ebay!

A friend of mine was given this as a gift but, unfortunately, although she liked the smell initially, after an hour or so it made her feel sick and headachey. She gave it to me and, when I tried it, I thought it was lovely and fresh and flowery but the same thing happened to me - sick headache. I passed it on to my mum who wears it with no problems and loves it. Body chemistry eh? Shame.

Kenzo's Satin Spray (the red satin bottle) is paradise. I like Flower EdT for a daily scent, but the parfum is for special days. If you are an almond lover, do try this. The almond, vanilla, and opoponax are much stronger than in the EdT, and the rather in-your-face, synthetic notes of the EdT (which I like but are definitely an aquired taste) are absent in the parfum. Lovely and smooth....

This is a very nice floriental. It was very powdery and I love the violet notes, which I believe create the powdery scent. I don't get "candied" though like so many other reviews. This lasted for a long time on me and kept smelling great throughout the day. I have Flower Oriental and I like that alot too, but it's quite heavier than this. I smell alot of the original Flower in Flower Oriental, but this is lighter and more suited for daytime/casual. Overall a very nice scent!

I liked Miss Spring's review very much. She has pretty much covered any points I would have made and made me smile too. I used to love Flower. When I didn't have money and one of favourite pursuits was getting free spritzes in department stores, I would head straight for Flower. I'll bet I'm not the first person who thinks ah I've found it! My signature scent! This is how floral should be. But no, because it's synthetic an powdery. Almost a parody of a flower, and not in a brazen flirty nudge-nudge-wink-wink European way, like say YSL Paris. Flower aims for that, and falls short because it takes itself too seriously. The arthouse bottle does it no favours in that, and for a while everyone wore it. They should have stuck it in a fun bottle like Anna Sui did with Dolly Girl and removed the powderyness, replaces it with a dewy wet spring note. Perhaps something green to balance it out. It's always odd to go off something, because you start to doubt your own taste, so sorry if I've over pruned this particular bloom.

I say that I would repurchase this, but I am not 100% sure that I would ever run out of it... if I do, I will be getting it again! I have FlowerbyKenzo, Bvlgari pour Femme and Lipstick Rose and they all satisfy the same craving for sugared violets. Now FLowerbyKenzo is the one I go to when I want something very gilry and pretty, youthful and soft. I know that I can wear this to the office without worrying I would offend anyone. It is slightly powdery and sweet on my skin and remains fresh for the duration. Not a baby-powder scent at all, I cannot stand the actual baby-powder scent, this in fact is very different kind of powdery - very lovely. I prefer to wear this during cooler months, especially love it in autumn. Of course I too would agree with others who say that this is one you should try on before buying blind...

I have always taught that Kenzo scents are waterlike, light, florals.
I got one small testtube of this one, and get suprissed. Its sweet, some vanilj, mysk and flowers. But this is´nt pure flowerscent.
Remainds me of Paul Smith, London.
I ad it to my wishlist right a way.

If Flower by Kenzo were a blind date, the evening would evolve like this:
He arrives and is better looking than you'd hoped, he has sex appeal and he is so incredibly charming. At the beginning of the date you are in heaven. Then he quickly starts to lose his allure and you begin to feel let down. "Is it me?" you wonder, as you are still hopeful. But after a short while, you find him definitely dull and even slightly annoying.
You end the date by shaking hands like it is a business meeting. Your blind date with Flower wasn't a complete waste of time, because he was nice and polite. But he was also superficial and he faked you out with that initial burst of wonderfulness.
Your friends who fixed you up with him suggest that you were too harsh. Flower by Kenzo is worthy, they tell you, but then they admit he does have these flaws that would prevent them from getting romantically involved with him.
So what do you do when he calls you for another date? You fix him up with your cousin.

My signature special occasion scent-- My now husband picked it out for me when we were dating only two months. He was in Spain at the time, and it did not come to the US market for another two years, as far as I know.

It is a soft, metropolitan, classy, oriental-floral, with an emphasis on the Bulgarian rose and the myrrh (Oppoponax). It is a whispering fragrance. I always get compliments when I wear it. I am on my second bottle. I also have the Flower Le Parfum, which comes in a red bottle, and is heavier on the vanilla and the incense, therefore better for winter.

This was my first perfume (not counting drugstore scents). I wanted to put one on my wishlist and this was the only one I could find that I liked. It is sugary sweet, almost like candied violet leaves or violet flavoured sweets rather than like fresh violets. Other than that a sweet, girlie floral. Not bad, but I wouldn't use it nowadays.

Wow this is a truly amazing scent. The smell translates into beautiful in my mind. It's free, playful, and even childish. I see myself running fancy free into an open field of colorful flowers and greenery in the warm sunshine. Totally beautiful.

Kind of fresh fragrance for women. Not too flowery. Both of my sis love this so much. The fragrance is just okay to me.

First of all, I tried Kenzo's Flower EDP expecting to hate it. As, the last 2 Kenzo perfumes I hated with a passion. Violets, vanilla and a very delicate rose are the main notes on my skin. This has to be the most realistic violet note; hence the powdery feel of Flower. I have to say this is one of the only violet perfumes that doesn't turn dusty smelling on my skin. Also, the rose note in Flower EDP is so well done. It's not a synthetic, heavy, overtly perfumey rose like most others I've tried. It's really a delicate and light rose undertone. On my skin this smells cool, modern and just beautiful. Flower is very long lasting too, with wonderful sillage.

Keep this in the refrigerator for a wonderful refresh on a warm sunny day. I love to spritz on after I get inside from planting flowers.

I can only describe this fragrance as:

Dr. Scholls Footpowder

Sorry.

The hawthorn and Cassie made this an isntant dispapointment. Definitely what I would normally think of as floral, this is a blend of unusual blossoms, but slightly bitter and powdery. The addition of violet just makes it worse.

I love this one, but love more Flower Le Parfum.
This version is available in three sizes 15ml - just a drop - because of its fluid texture, 50 ml - standard perfume, and 75 ml - satin skin spray - dry oil texture. Great coctail of Bulgarian Rose,Parma Violet,Vanilla,White Musk,Almond and Amber.

Okay, it's important to note that there are really *two* Flower by Kenzos - the EDP in the clear glass bottle with the red flower and the parfum in the solid red brushed metal bottle. Both are lovely, both are worth owning - but they are very different. The EDP is very much about florals - particularly violet, which comes through headily in the topnotes - and rose, with vanilla and a bit of sweet woodiness playing supporting roles. It's a very soft, almost muted fragrance, very pretty but not what I would call striking or terribly individual. The parfum, however, is an entirely different tale and one well worth exploring if you have not done so yet. It picks up on some of the EDP's notes - the rose and violet as well as the vanilla, opoponax and white musk from the EDP's base - and intertwines them with amber and almond. The result is just pure heaven, nearly indescribable in its beauty. Mind you, there is a bit of waiting required to get to the good part; on initial application, you very much get a fairly basic violet tinged with just a touch of almond. But once thirty minutes or so passes, you find yourself with a patch of paradise on your skin, a sweet velvet essence so inviting that it becomes almost a full sensory experience rather than just an olfactory one. If it sounds too incredible to believe, I urge you to try it for yourself; just be sure you track down the parfum. For quite a while, I heard people rave about Flower by Kenzo and couldn't figure out what the big deal was over the slightly underwhelming EDP. Then I finally got around to trying the parfum - and now I know!

Imagine what spring would smell like. Flower by Kenzo is exactly it. It's very light, soft, innocent, and pure. A nice beginning scent for spring.