Kenzo Flower

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Kenzo Flower is the fragrance that spawned many flankers. Though it’s not quite at the excess of Shalimar, it can be a bit difficult to navigate the Flower maze. This review focuses on the original Flower, inspired by the concept of what a poppy would smell like and released in 2000. Flower

In Bottle: Bright and green. Smells fresh with a predominant sweet rose and violet fragrance. This smells a bit dewy and definitely smells clean.

Applied: The bright green of Flower is a fleeting little thing. Upon initial spray, you still detect it. You can even still smell it for a few seconds on the skin but as soon as it starts to dry, Flower loses that brightness and greenness and takes on a more floral and powdery scent. It still smells clean but it’s less of a screaming fresh scent now. It’s more of a classy, powdery, rose affair with a nice sprinkling of sweet violets to further write it into the floral powder category. Flower smells very familiar to me because of the predominant powder and violet. After mulling it over a bit, I realized why it smelled familiar and cracked open my tin of Guerlain’s Meteorites (the makeup not the fragrance). Instant familiarity. These two smell similar due to the powder and violets. They are not the same scent and Flower is obviously much more complex. As it dries down the powder takes the rose with it while the violets hang about and stay sweet until completely disappearing.

Extra: Kenzo is a fragrance, skincare and fashion brand founded by Kenzo Takada. It was bought out by LVMH in 1993.

Design: Flower’s bottle has a modern and rather recognizable look. It’s tall, curved, clear glass with a flower drawn on it. The stem of the flower runs up the middle of the bottle and the flower is drawn onto the cap. There are three different versions for the three sizes. Each of them represent the different life stages of the poppy. Very cute, rather chic, lovely bottle. A bit difficult to hold but I can sacrifice function for something that looks this good.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Bulgarian rose, wild hawthorn, cassie, violets, opopanax, white musk, hedione, cyclosal.

You may have seen hedione mentioned a couple of times. It is a fragrance enhancing component, usually coupled with jasmine but can be used with a wide variety of other notes too.

Reviewed in This Post: Flower, 2009, Eau de Parfum.

Vera Wang Flower Princess

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With the wildly popular original Princess, Vera Wang’s Flower Princess flanker is a follow-up that wanted to appeal to cute culture (it exists). Not sure why they had to create a flanker to pitch the Princess line to the cute revolution. The original Princess is practically an embodiment of cute. I don’t even like cute. Flower Princess

In Bottle: Light florals and not a whole lot else. As I understand it, Flower Princess apparently did away with any sense of discretion and amped up the flowers.

Applied: Smells like flowers upon initial spray and top note discovery leads to more flowers. Indescribable flowers that mix into a miasma of floral that I can’t even begin to separate though the mimosa in this peeks its head up from the Flower Princess shaped hole to say hello now and then. Flower Princess is pretty true to her name at this point in time as the concoction of light florals starts dissipating. The mid-stage is very similar to the original princess, that sweet, floral scent though it is missing the dark chocolate note. I actually miss that dark chocolate note. It was my favorite part and it gave the original Princess something to brag about. The dry down is also extremely similar with a warm, vanilla and clean musk exit.

Extra: The thing about Flower Princess’ availability is interesting. It’s permanently available in the Asian market but is a limited edition for everybody else. You can no longer get a bottle of this stuff unless you’re in an Asian country. Why? I don’t know! Probably has to do with the prominence of cute culture in places like Korea and Japan. But if you’re looking to get Flower Princess, hop on a plane.

Design: There isn’t a whole lot of difference between Flower Princess and Princess’ packaging. Actually, I think they’re exactly the same with Flower Princess having a  pinker hue to it and a silver cap instead of gold. Other than that, they’re identical.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Green ivy, tangerine, water lily, orange flower petals, Moroccan rose, exotic jasmine sambac, mimosa, apricot skin, amber, precious woods, musk.

I found Flower Princess to be a little less invasive on the sweet side though I’m not wild about how uninteresting it is as a flanker. It is just a bit more grown up than the original Princess though.

Reviewed in This Post: Flower Princess, 2008, Eau de Toilette.