Why Kilian Paris wants to seduce India's perfume buyers
Kilian Hennessy of Kilian Paris on entering the Indian market, his creative process and the evolving consumer
Whether you wish to smell like Rihanna or find your own fragrance stamp, Kilian Hennessy of the cult fragrance label Kilian Paris is here to help you smell good. The brand launched in India last year with ELCA Cosmetics.
According to Rohan Vaziralli, general Manager, ELCA Cosmetics, the Indian consumer is looking for individuality in perfumes—giving Kilian Paris, known for its unisex perfumes, ample opportunity in the market. “The boundaries between his and her perfumes are blurred, it’s very unisex today. And they are looking for more brands, as they discover them as they travel. Angels’ Share, a unisex perfume, and Good Girl Gone Bad have sold the most since our launch. And surprisingly, the consumer ratio is close to 50-50," says Vaziralli.
In an interview with Lounge, Hennessy talks about his love for India's sandalwood, and the process of creating a perfume. Edited excerpts:
How do you narrow down your experiences to design a scent?
I usually have too many ideas and I have to narrow them down to what I feel and believe in. I am not always successful in creating what I had in mind. An artist I love the most is Gustav Klimt, I was reading about his creative process and he used only gold leaf, black and white in the early stages.
I thought, ‘Can I create a scent that smells like gold, black and white for me?’ Pepper, patchouli and vanilla are ingredients that for me correspond to the same creative process as Klimt for his portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. Luckily that give birth to Woman in Gold.
For Good Girl Gone Bad (tuberose from India is the star ingredient in this fragrance), Eve was the symbol of femininity for me, so I wanted to work with flowers. But I wanted the flowers to evolve from good girl to bad girl, from romantic to erotic.
Our creative process is exactly the way Mozart was looking at composing an opera—we look for little notes that will be accepted by the original accord while adding a little nuance. Also like a chef’s creative process, you try and taste it; and sometimes it is just disgusting, it’s trial and error.
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What do you do when you are stuck in a rut creatively?
The perfume that I am launching next year took me two years to create. Usually I put things on hold for a month or two and I try to forget about the note. Then from my desk of little samples, I wear it as a customer, and think about the emotion it stirs, if I feel something is missing, I ask myself, ‘Is it not exciting?’ You have to have a vision of what it’s going to smell like. The real idea always comes in the mind. I write down a lot of ideas, it’s a lot of thinking and back and forth with notes.
How would you describe India through fragrance notes?
Indians love perfumes, and jasmine, tuberose and sandal are the ingredients that I love. I have created a scent called Sacred Wood. When I entered the fragrance industry, the sandalwood from Mysore (Mysuru) was (and is) the most beautiful ingredient that made me fall in love with the perfume world. But we cannot use that ingredient anymore (there’s a ban on the exports). The industry then looked at other locations where the climate and soil would be compatible to that of Mysore. They found a region in Australia, but we need to wait for 40 years for the tree to mature before it gives the milky-rich smell of the sandalwood from Mysore. Now it’s been 25 years since the planting, so we are starting to get the essential oil from Australia that is getting closer to the one from Mysore. It’s not there yet but is getting there. And I have used and recomposed it with Sacred Wood. I did it with Calice Becker, who had to recreate the scent of sandalwood from Mysore for Samsara from Guerlain, it used to contain 20% of sandalwood from Mysore. That was the base for my Sacred Wood.
Your thoughts on dupes, is it flattery or problematic?
It’s a mixed feeling. You only copy what is successful and what you admire, so it is the utmost form of love. But at the same time, it’s a disjunction, a dupe wouldn’t exist if you didn’t buy and know the experience of the original. The dupes I have tried are not close to my scents because I put so much knowledge and money in the quality of ingredients, my quality is my best protection against dupes.
What does the new generation want?
The younger generation really sees longevity and projection in the air as a sign of quality. It’s a shame because you can do a very beautiful romantic rose, delicate but not powerful, or a beautiful citrus perfume, but it will never have that projection. What I find challenging today, in order to get to the level of the diffusion in the air, brands end up using the same ingredients that offer that projection.
I am very cautious about not being lost in the desire to create overly powerful perfumes. To be honest, I don’t know what they (Gen Z) want and I am trying not to be interested. Some 500 brands are anyway going to create scents that are in the same direction, and we are all going to be lost in the same notes. I am going to go in the opposite direction for sure.
Your tips for finding the right fragrance?
Get a sample, wear it, and see what you feel about it. Do you feel more beautiful, elegant, sexy, chic? Are people telling you, ‘You smell good?’ Hopefully, customers go to brands like mine to feel unique. If you wear Coco Mademoiselle or J’adore from Dior, you would smell like 20 million other women.
Don’t you want 20 million women to buy your perfumes?
I would love it!
Please tell us a bit about your yet-to-launch perfume.
It’s an olfactory family I haven’t touched yet, called the Chypre. It’s a structure made of bergamot, rose, patchouli and a lesser note. I never wanted to do a chypre as I always felt it smells a bit old and not very modern. That’s why it took me two years to create a chypre that I find sexy and modern.
Dhara Vora Sabhnani is a Mumbai-based writer.
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