FLOWER POWER

Alessandro Michele’s touch reaches from fashion to fragrance with another striking creation for fall: Gucci Bloom

(100ml for $124), a confident and complex floral scent that reinvigorates the house’s storied fragrance heritage.

Jasmine, one of Bloom’s most prominent notes, is complemented by rarer aromas, like that of the flower of the Rangoon creeper, which has never before been used in a perfume. Grown in southern India, the blossom opens at dusk, gradually deepening in color from white to pink to a deep red. Gucci Bloom similarly evolves as you wear it, from an initial floral scent to a more intense, earthier tone that’s especially suited to fall.

The fragrance is bolder and less delicate than the brand’s other women’s offerings, like Eau de Gucci (which debuted in 1993 with its mix of citrus, tuberose, and lily of the valley) and Envy (a fresher, grassier fragrance introduced in 1997). Bloom is, essentially, a perfume for Michele’s modern woman: feminine and beautiful but never predictable or shy. (Appropriately, actress

Dakota Johnson, artist Petra Collins, and model Hari Nef are at the center of Bloom’s ad campaign.)

While the company introduced its first perfume, Gucci No. 1, in 1974, and has had international success in the arena ever since, it has increased its focus on fragrance over the last decade, unveiling more scents than ever before, like 2009’s clean, youthful Flora and, in 2010, the bold Gucci Guilty. But Bloom is the only perfume with Michele’s thorough input and imprint. To create its powerful floral blend, he worked with revered perfumer Alberto Morillas, whose résumé includes

Calvin Klein’s CK One and Cartier’s Panthère de Cartier. The result, like most of Gucci’s offerings, seems to bridge a gap, appealing as much to a sophisticated socialite who’s been a Gucci fan for decades as it does to a young woman, newer to Gucci, heading out for a night on the town.