One of a kind
Bulgari’s latest scents make good use of innovative techniques to breathe new life into old favourites.
To explore is to unearth the untouched and go, see, wear, buy, even spritz something mysterious. Whether it’s navigating a rabbit warren of stalls at an exotic market in search of never-before-seen summer mules, or spying a circa-18th-century artwork in a rural antiques store, it’s human nature to search, to forage and, ultimately, to discover something new. And never has this been more apparent than in the world of fragrance, where the discovery of unique ingredients is a rare occurrence, so much so that their subsequent inclusion in new offerings often results in an eye-wateringly high price tag. And just as my fashion-loving friend would argue that her hard-tofind mules were a must-have come summertime, perfumers know a particularly esoteric ingredient has the ability to catapult an otherwise sedentary floral, for example, to a lofty bouquet.
Enigmatic ingredients are, in fact, what separate the icons (Chanel No 5, Dior J’adore, Yves Saint Laurent Opium) from the one-note
NEW TECHNIQUES ARE USED TO MODERNISE THE CULT JUICES
wonders. Modern-day perfumers are in endless pursuit of that mysterious olfactive note to transport a “nice” perfume to a cult scent. Take orris root (the root of the iris flower), which is widely recognised as one of the most expensive ingredients available to perfumers (in second place to oud), thanks to the lengthy maturation process it must undergo. Its strong floral note is woven into popular juices such as Byredo Gypsy Water, Jo Malone Orris & Sandalwood and Calvin Klein’s CK One. Likewise ambergris, a mainstay of Amouage Amber and Creed Aventus, is an excretion of the sperm whale, and, despite its rather irksome beginnings, it’s considered one of the most valuable fragrance ingredients available.
Of course, the foundations of a cult fragrance lie not in cherry-picking an ingredient that’s been, for example, churned through a mammal’s stomach, but in the precision, innovation and oftentimes restraint that perfumers showcase when using such valuable notes.
Bulgari, a house first synonymous with precious stones before turning its hand to fragrance, has uniquely dubbed the hero, or most rarefied, ingredients in its new Splendida collection “divas”. “The ‘diva’ is the one that you can perhaps smell the most, or the most precious ingredient,” says perfumer Sophie Labbé, who was tasked with reimagining a trio of iconic Bulgari scents – Bulgari Pour Femme, Rose Essentielle and Jasmin Noir – to “give them modernity and more luxury”. While staying true to the original juices’ core olfactive notes – iris, rose and jasmine, respectively – Labbé was able to employ new techniques to modernise the cult juices, bringing them into the now. “It was really important to have these three ingredients enhanced in the fragrances, because it’s like Bulgari’s gems,” she says of the three new scents: Splendida Iris d’Or, Rose Rose and Jasmin Noir.
Confined to the framework of the original scents, Labbé looked to cutting-edge innovations surrounding existing ingredients to bring new life, a sense of oomph, to the juices. While perfumery is centred around nature, science has, in fact, armed perfumers with more inventive ways to extract ingredients. “It’s an interesting approach and process, because, for instance, in Iris d’Or in the previous formula there was vetiver oil, and I changed it to vetiver heart, because this is a technique that allows us to take away all of the different parts we don’t like anymore,” says Labbé. “Vetiver is a beautiful, novel wood, very elegant, but thanks to innovation we can split all the ingredients from the essential oil.” On application, the final juice flickers with notes of violet and raspberry, before it peaks with sandalwood, vetiver and tonka bean. Sunny and powdery, courtesy of the iris (the iris Labbé included in the scent is the most expensive ingredient in the world: it takes 40,000 irises to make one kilogram of absolute), the new interpretation feels renewed and utterly modern. Perhaps Labbé’s greatest challenge was reinterpreting Bulgari’s 2006 Rose Essentielle, which meant breathing new life into not only a cult fragrance with a dutiful following but one of the most overworked floral ingredients available to perfumers. Labbé again relied on innovation in the extraction process of certain ingredients for a fresh take on the familiar rose note. Labbé chose the damask rose, hailing from Turkey, which she married with an essential oil of rose petals and a rosewater essential extracted via a process unavailable at the time of the original formulation. “The result is that your rose scent is as close [as possible] to the fresh rose in the garden; you have this feeling of really crisp fresh rose,” she says. Rose Rose is first up fruity and sparkling, before it dries down to a remarkably fresh take – like watering a rose garden in spring – while leaving a sillage of patchouli and sandalwood. The eruption of new interpretations of existing ingredients isn’t without its obstacles, however. Labbé warns that perfumers need to adapt and find their inner alchemists to proffer the best scents. “It’s very exciting, but first we have to try it, put it in a fragrance, you know, you have to feel comfortable with it. So, you need to know each other, you need to learn about each other.” Learning, searching, discovering or exploring, whether for the perfect summer mules or the perfect scent, is a process. But as the saying goes, it’s the journey, not the destination.