After a nearly decade‑long hiatus from the world of perfumes, Balenciaga has decided to delve back into it with not one but 10 new fragrances. Keng Yang Shuen gives you a whiff of this daring endeavour.
Le Dix, Balenciaga’s first perfume created by house founder Cristobal Balenciaga himself, was the starting point for the brand’s new collection of 10 fragrances.
For all its radicalness, Balenciaga has been largely quiet when it comes to perfumery – a world where science and art collide, and that many luxury houses consider a playground for pushing creative boundaries. Now, that’s about to change.
The Spanish house has announced the release of a new collection of 10 fragrances. For now, these will only be carried in the brand’s Parisian flagship on Avenue George V, selected Balenciaga boutiques in Europe and North America, and online (balenciaga.com), with further roll‑outs planned for the Middle East, Asia and worldwide. It’s major news for fans of the house as well as fragrances; after all – according to perfume community database Fragrantica – the last time the house had launched a scent was nearly a decade ago in 2016: the woody aromatic B. Balenciaga Intense.
Talk about throwback. Here’s a poster marketing the launch of the original scent that dates back to 1947.
Its new collection of perfumes is a major throwback to Le Dix, its first fragrance created by the brand’s eponymous founder Cristobal Balenciaga in 1947. Following a 15‑year‑long hunt through the archives, the brand rediscovered the original Le Dix bottle and modelled the refillable flacons of the new scents after it, each featuring the same globular glass cap and hand‑tied ribbon. And as an even bolder nod to Le Dix’s history, the boxes protecting the bottles have – in true Balenciaga style – been treated to appear aged and comes encased in the brand’s signature industrial grey packaging, bridging the old and the new.
The 10 fragrances in Balenciaga’s new perfume collection – each with irreverent names true to the brand’s spirit – range from smoky to clear and sparkling. The standout? Possibly the reissue of the original Balenciaga perfume that started it all: Le Dix. an elegant floral evening scent that blends sprightly notes of bergamot and lemon with a powdery iris heart. All come in refillable flacons with globular glass caps and hand‑tied ribbons, housed in boxes that have been treated to look aged.
The scents themselves are even more intriguing. There is, of course, the reissue of Le Dix, reimagined for the contemporary wearer with a slightly modernised formula that still captures the powdery violet‑and‑iris elegance of the original. Alongside that are nine wittily titled creations. Among them are No Comment, a woody aromatic scent fusing Spanish cypress oil with green synthetic molecules and resinous woods; Twenty Four Seven, a musky amber gourmand built around vanilla absolute, amber and incandescent musks; and To Be Confirmed, a sheer floral tea scent featuring a custom tulip accord and Chinese tea leaf extract.
Of the 10 fragrances in the collection, which would be the standout? Possibly the reissue of the original Balenciaga perfume that started it all: Le Dix, an elegant floral evening scent that blends sprightly notes of bergamot and lemon with a powdery iris heart. All come in refillable flacons with globular glass caps and hand‑tied ribbons, housed in boxes that have been treated to look aged.
Every scent smells delicious, which leaves us in quite the bind: Can we get just the one? For those who can’t – or want to explore before committing – Balenciaga offers, in addition to the full‑sized 100ml bottles, more digestible 15ml travel sprays that are refillable as well. There’s also the Discovery Box, comprising 2ml vials of all 10 scents, and the set of Le Dix minis, which similarly gets you all the fragrances but in larger 10ml flacons, cheekily arranged in a way that’s meant to bring to mind how guests are seated at a fashion show. Now, that is novel.