HEAVY PETALS
AS FASHION LUXURIATES IN OPULENT BLOOMS THIS WINTER, SO TOO DOES SCENT. BETHAN COLE EXPLORES THE DARKER SIDE OF FLORAL FRAGRANCE
Floral fragrances
The tradition of floral perfumery is generally thought to be one of delicacy; those light and weightless scents we wear in the warmer months of the year for their subtlety, nuance and translucency. But for wintertime, and in step with fashion’s new appetite for more plush and velvety blooms (witness the opulent brocades and blousy, jewel-toned prints at Erdem, Prada and Valentino), there’s a different breed of floral fragrance – darker, heavier and more hypnotic. Dark florals are nothing new, of course – just look at Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle. With heart notes of jasmine and rose and a base of vetiver and patchouli, this 2003 ‘floriental’ is simultaneously sensual and moody, with that woodsy, resinous tinge underneath a luminous pile of petals. Frédéric Malle’s Portrait Of A Lady from 2010, another modern classic, gives elegant floral notes a similar depth-charge. It’s a Turkish delight of a rose perfume, but with the rich, concentrated prickle of patchouli, sandalwood and frankincense. If perfumes are, as German poet Heinrich Heine put it, the feelings of flowers, here is love, melancholy and yearning, all bound up in one beautifully complex scent. Most recently, the dark floral has evolved into something even more daring, playing with the idea of decadence and even (whisper it) death. Allsaints’ Flora Mortis is much more wearable than the name suggests – yes, inspiration came from the full, powder-sweet scent of cut blooms on the very edge of collapse, but in actuality it’s cashmere-cosy, with smokey orchid, black pepper and amber. It takes after Timothy Han’s The Decay Of The Angel, the first of this kind of on-the-turn floral, with its rose, ylang-ylang and sambac jasmine notes weighted down with denser and darker frankincense, oudh, cedarwood and labdanum. ‘I am not a light and whimsical kind of person. There are dark undertones within all my fragrances,’ says Han.
In these twilight florals, the complexity comes not from any intrinsic darkness of the blossoms involved, but from the setting they’re placed in. ‘I love to contrast more intense ingredients with the prettiness of the floral ones. Rose with patchouli, for example, or a resin such as labdanum,’ says Floral Street’s Master Perfumer, Jérome Epinette. In his Ylang Ylang Espresso, the calibration of creamy petals and pitch-black coffee bean allows both to flourish in a yin and yang dance. The motivation for wearing a fragrance such as this? To feel at once a dizzying floral lightness and a wrap-up-warm sensuality of ambers and woods. ‘A dark floral carries a certain attitude,’ says Michelle Feeney, Floral Street’s founder. ‘We have changing moods. Sometimes we want to be light and delicate, sometimes feisty and unafraid.’
Frédéric Malle’s latest edition is Rose & Cuir by Jean-claude Ellena. For some, the marriage of rose and leather – the most romantic of flowers cavorting with rough trade – feels like cognitive dissonance. For others, it’s a flash of brilliance, allowing an icon of purity to be worn in a new way. Sonia Constant, founder and nose of Ella K, has such a dark rose in her collection. ‘Lettre de Pushkar is a dark and ambery rose, then spicy with oud and saffron,’ she says. ‘It’s the fire you feel when you are deeply in love and burnt by desire.’ Proof that pretty can be profound, too.