Balenciaga Paris Eau de Parfum (2010): The History of Balenciaga in 3 Acts or The Pure White Violets of the Future {Fragrance Review}
Balenciaga Paris is the new perfume of the renascent perfume house of Balenciaga, a project which was first announced in October 2008. The scent was launched for the press in December 2009 and released this spring 2010. Developed under the auspices of Balenciaga artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière (since 1998) and inspired by muse Charlotte Gainsbourg (in part), it would merit a more fashion-oriented report on it, but I will focus for this time on the olfactory aspects of the perfume composed by nose Olivier Polge.
The flacon nevertheless is a direct reflection of the cocoon dresses of Ghesquière which was once famously sported by American actress Jennifer Connolly. Rumor has it that she might have become the face of the new fragrance but for Ghesquière who insisted on having Charlotte Gainsbourg as its incarnation. The latter, a friend, was glad as she had secretly been wishing for it. By making this less commercial and less global choice, Balenciaga is accentuating the French context of the brand, its anchoring in Paris as a fashion capital natural to the essence of Balenciaga, founded by Spaniard Cristobal Balenciaga. This association came by through style affinities and personal ones rather than perfume connection since the French actress herself declared recently that it is the first perfume that she has ever worn and that it took her a while to entrust it to her skin. Gainsbourg is said to have had the last say between two final iterations favored by Ghesquière.
There were only four perfumes developed under the tenure of Cristobal Balenciaga before the couturier closed his fashion house in 1968 although many more were to follow until 2000 as licensed perfumes. The four original Balenciaga perfumes are Le Dix (1947), La Fuite des Heures (1949), Quadrille (1955) and Eau de Balenciaga for Men, his first masculine fragrance (1962).
Balenciaga Paris is an interesting exercise in historicized branding for which perfumer Olivier Polge played the part of court portraitist while finding enough room to add his own interpretation especially in the final evolution and meaning of the perfume.
The eau de parfum is in the end a very luminous, crystalline composition which seems to have wanted to capture only the white part of the light found in chypre fragrances and to have painted violets habitually seen as purple as the rarer kind of white violet....
Balenciaga salon in 1954 by Mark Shaw
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