Seductive scents by hot Paris perfumer
SEDUCTION, surrender, forbidden. You’d be forgiven for thinking you’d been plunged into the depths of a torrid French romance novel but these are, in fact, descriptors for perfume. Kilian, the Paris-based fragrance house founded by perfumer Kilian Hennessy, is rapidly getting male and female fans hot under the collar with its collection of luxurious evocative scents. The fragrance house only launched in 2007 and already it’s expanded from a shelf to an entire concession at Harvey Nichols where it is sold exclusively and is, according to HN chief fashion buyer Averyl Oates, “our top-selling scent”. Fans are currently awaiting the final chapter: Sweet Redemption: The End, due for launch in September.
“It’s about capturing that emotion in a scent,” explains Hennessy. Indeed – fragrances include the likes of “Prelude to Love: Invitation,” with Seville orange and intense ginger; and Love and Tears: Surrender, a heady scent made with Mediterranean jasmine and citrus, which expresses “the beginning of love mixed with excitement, the fear of the unknown and, ultimately, the surrender to love.”
Kilian spends nothing on marketing, investing everything on the best quality ingredients and essential oils. “Our product is our marketing,” says Hennessy. “Everything goes on that.” All bottles are designed in crystal and can be refilled in-store at its sleek black lacquered counter. “I want them to be the opposite of throwaway. They’re objets d’arts,” explains Hennessy.
Hennessy knows a thing or two about luxury. The grandson of the founder of the LVMH Group, he grew up among the family cellars in Cognac. He’s worked for most of France’s top fragrance houses, including Dior, Paco Rabanne and Alexander McQueen and L’Oreal. It was after the explosion of the fragrance industry that the idea struck him to go it alone. “I became disillusioned. The perfume world had all come down to this impossible equation. You had to make a luxury perfume, for very little money. Everything was devoted to the ad budget. The perfume had to appeal to the entire planet within a month of launching from Osaka to Dallas and if it didn’t it had failed. Towards the end I couldn’t tell one scent from the other,” says Hennessy. “I thought: What would happen if I did it my way? Kilian was the result.”
www.bykilian.com. Scents from £145 at Harvey Nichols.