FlowerbyKenzo by Kenzo, 2000

The opening is all cutie pies and femmey bliss through the wacky/folky Kenzo fashion filter that makes those qualities into an art. The drydown creeps in with a hazy suggestion of freshly turned shrimp cocktail. Opoponax (balsamic and animalic smelling resin), hawthorn (ultra sweet and sharp), and black currant (the cat pee note) are notes that easily read as bodily and profane. Mixed into a modern take on Royal Bain de Caron like Flower, funeralic associations emerge: cheap bouquets and fetid bodies. Also there are ketones given off right before death, and this musk smacks of that scent to me. A very morbid review, I realize, and if Flower sustains the pleasure of its opening notes for you and skips out on the heavily disturbing drydown, you're luckier than I was. A perfume that means to be creepy and does it with grace I can take, but this sort of unintentional lipstick on the teeth scenario made for several queasy wearings before Flower was banish'ed. Though I like many scents generally disliked by most people, this one is beyond reprieve: could be summed up as soiled diaper and a rare true case of dead ringer baby powder. But like someone with a flower in place of a brain, I'll probably give this one another try at some point and report back once the extant repeat trauma has faded from memory. It's at least iconic?

There's no doubt that FbK is a perfume to which people are seldom indifferent. It has a smell of quality, it's penetrating and powerful in its unnuanced sweetness. I don't experience it transforming over time at all, as others seem to. On me, it's signally reluctant to do anything but fade a bit. If I didn't wash, it'd hang on, getting stale, but still resolutely, recognisably itself. I've had it and worn it, on and off, for several years, the same bottle. At first, I was enchanted by what I took to be its splendid girly innocence. I guess what's happened is: I find its lack of development over time, its insistent shout of sweetness just plain tiring. One can weary of the best perfume, but this one seems designed in a wearisome way. Any charm offensive can fail, it falls apart into charm... and offensive... Someone mentioned Baudrillard and the idea of a simulacrum - something which is an imitation of something else that doesn't actually exist. What a wonderful insight - and about the art of modern perfumery in general too; modern perfumes being mostly made of aromachemicals. Yes, it's nothing less than Art. Anyway, to get back to FbK, shallow is shallow is shallow. In FbK, the map has indeed become the territory. FbK goes nowhere slowly and is, perhaps, the appropriate scent for my last day. When I leave a wish-list of garments and so on for my body to be clad in, I'll ask to be perfumed with FbK. I won't be able to smell it and I'll be beyond weariness.

It's been a while since I first reviewed Kenzo FLOWER, my memory of which is best summed up as : vanilla baby powder. I fortuitously received a fresh sample in the mail just this week, and as I am attempting to understand Caron ROYAL BAIN DE CHAMPAGNE, it seems an opportune time to take up FLOWER again. The opening of FLOWER holds lots of promise for this lover of violetswhether from Parma or elsewhere! Upon initially dabbing the fragrance all over my arms and décolleté today, I began to wonder whether my vanilla baby powder memory of FLOWER was really all wrong. Had I reviewed the perfume on a humid day, or irresponsibly allowed my blood caffeine content to dip to a dangerous low before brandishing my pen? Who knows? In those opening minutes, just enough time, coincidentally enough, to make the big sell at counters all over the world, this perfume seems like some sort of dream come true, a rich floriental with seductive appeal, clearly comprising top-notch notes which wax and wane in a lilting, lyrical way. Alas, the drydown commences shortly thereafter, during which everything flattens out and begins to smell progressively more synthetic until, at last, I recall why my memory of FLOWER as vanilla baby powder was right all along. Certainly not a bad perfume, but rather blunt and banal in the final analysis, when all is said and sniffed. Rather like a marriage which may endure for years in a stagnant state after an initially exciting but short-lived romance. Would poppies smell like vanilla baby powder, if they had a scent? Sure, why not? (if pigs could fly)