Almost 15 years ago, Kilian Hennessy was lauching its own perfume brand, Kilian Paris. If his name is inseparable from the famous Cognac firm, his objective is simple and takes up the family spirit: to conceive a new luxury brand, in the image of the perfumery of yesteryear.
«The whole idea behind this project is to put perfume back on its pedestal, to recreate a perfumery as it existed in the 19th century and during the first half of the 20th century, but with a modern touch, that is to say with a contemporary style. »
The idea is to design a modern and unique perfume brand with a strong identity, while taking up the codes of our grandparents, when perfume was still a luxury product, exclusive, far from the perfumes of the big brands distributed by the million today.
Today, Kilian Paris is lauching its very first Eau de Cologne, Kologne, shield of protection, where it gives its vision of the traditional Cologne. An iconic product, but with the Kilian signature of course!
And who better to talk about its products and its firm than its creator ? Icon-Icon met Kilian Hennessy to find out more about this niche perfumer!
To begin and recontextualize for our readers, could you go back over your journey/career to the creation of Kilian Paris almost 15 years ago?
In fact, I arrived at the perfumes by chance.
After my DEUG, I entered CELSA, a school belonging to Paris IV Sorbonne, to do my magistère, a diploma that the Ministry of National Education was talking about abolishing, which was never done. If it hadn’t been for the rumour that the master’s degree would be abolished, I think I would never have discovered perfume.
To avoid having only a DEUG diploma recognised by the State, the director of our training asked us to defend a thesis in order to validate at least a master’s degree – a Bac+4 diploma.
We already had a lot of work to do, so everyone was looking more for a topic in which we already had a certain amount of information, for convenience. The previous year, I did an internship at Kenzo, with the communications director, at the time of the launch of Kashaya. The challenge was to carry out a semiological analysis of a corpus of advertisements around the women’s perfume in order to position itself around this launch. This therefore formed the basis of my sources for my 5th year thesis.
In order to guide my subject, I immerse myself in the dissertations that have been done previously on the subject. The question left unanswered that comes up the most is the following: How can we communicate about a meaning and a product for which there is no common signifying language among people?
In the world of perfume we do not have six musical notes or three primary colours, but three thousand notes. So when you smell a scent, you’re in something like a grassy area, for example. But if I’m with a perfumer, we’re going to say “well, it smells like cis-3-Hexanol”, but if I tell you that, of course I’m speaking Chinese. So I’m going to say “it smells like cut grass”, using metaphors, because there is a huge vocabulary around these three thousand notes which are not accessible to ordinary people.
When I realised this, I realised that I had to put my nose into the raw materials, to understand what I was talking about. So I decided to go to a perfumer’s school, the Cinquième Sens school. From day one, I fell in love with this area. To talk about metaphor, I often talk about perfume as a tsunami in my life. I was also very lucky on another point, that of the academic methodology in France, in particular the notion of cross-interviewing an actor on the subject. I had the chance to talk to Jacques Cavallier who had just created L’Eau d’Issey Miyake, which enabled me to obtain my end-of-study internship at Armani Parfum, where I learned a lot.
I worked for 10 years as as artistic director of perfume creation for fashion houses: Paco Rabane, Alexander McQueen, Gucci, Giorgio Armani and then for L’Oréal for three years. Since a perfume is like a movie, I think that there is no great movie without great scenario and I think the same for perfume, there is no great perfume without great history behind it, that’s why when I created my brand I didn’t want to create a brand where perfume would have been called Patchouli,, Amber or Rose. But if my perfume is called rose, I needed a script with whom I could work with the perfumer. My first rose was called Liaisons dangereuses, there’s not necessarily a script but this name gives us an emotion. I search to translate this emotion in a perfume.
In the major groups, perfume got such a financial stake that the decision is not taken by one person but it is a collegial decision even though in my opinion, compromise never allows to create a great perfume.
To work on a parfume I wasn’t proud of, even if some challenges existed sometimes, ended up boring me, that’s why I wished to lauch my own firm.
If you have to describe your firm in one word what would it be ?
Daring and timeless. I wanted a brand which travels through time, imprinted with its time and at the same time with the foundations to allow me to come after.
Could you tell us the olfactory signature of Maison Kilian ? Or some olfactive family ?
defining only one olfactory signature seems difficult because there are many olfactive familyin the world of perfume.
If we classify perfumes in four main families we could highlight/ put forward the fresh perfumes in which I tried to work on an harmony that I called on the Rocks, a work on aldehyde, some fresh or even icy notes. In flowers I don’t work on innocent and romantic flowers such as lily of the valley, lilac or peony but on narcotic and poisonous such as tuberose, orange blossom, rose and thorns. On woods, I work with dark woods, cellar woods more than transparent white woods. An finally, there’s a family that I’ve called clouds of smoke which is a work on tobacco notes.
Your small bottle got a really specific design, could you tell us a little bit more ?
Nowadays, there are even two bottles in the brand: one bottle with which I launched my brand and a second that I created for the launch of an olfactory family – Liqueurs.
The original bottle is a bottle that is both simple and complicated, simple because visually we can see a frontal rectangle. However, there’s a lot of details.
For example, f you tilt the bottle, it is rounded, curved, it is called a “Caron”, between a square and a round.
The sides of the bottle are engraved in the glass with a shield motif. I personally always thought that perfume was at the same time a a weapon of seduction with a power of attraction but also a kind of an olfactory bubble that protects us from the outside world when we wrap ourselves in it. In this direction , I always thought that perfume got protection power, as a shield.
Thereafter, The sides are lacquered in matt black, while the front and rear are lacquered in gloss black with a varnish to accentuate the matt black lacquer effect.
The most important thing was that my bottles were presented in boxes, lacquered wooden boxes with satin interiors that close with a key and a pompom. In this way, the perfume is revalued. In the Baccarat private mansion in Paris, there is a small museum of 100 square metres, when I went there, there was an exhibition on the baccarat perfume shop I stayed there for hours, overwhelmed by the level of luxury, the attention to detail, the beauty in general of what the perfume houses were offering our grandparents in terms of creation in contrast to what the perfume industry has been offering consumers for the last thirty or forty years. I resigned at L’Oréal, I was convinced that the consumer was entitled to have a beautiful product in his home again, to create a brand that would be in the image of what I had seen at the Baccarat museum but obviously designed and thought out for the 21st century.
That was really the starting point and when the first mock-up arrived on my desk, I thought it was very beautiful but there was still one major concern: that of perfume as a disposable product. I then decided to make all my bottles refillable, so we go back to our grandmothers who had a bottle on their dressing table, engraved with their initials and then went to their perfumer to be refilled, it’s a bit the same approach today for me, a return to the origins.
It is also today a major challenge in terms of respect for the environment
Obviously because, in the end, luxury should set the pace on this subject, a true luxury value, a true luxury object should not be disposable, otherwise and by essence, it cannot be luxury.
Perfume is often said to be the most accessible luxury product, your notion of perfumery seems to go against this concept, what is your vision?
This was the case because, and this is the complexity that brands like ours have, because on the western market, for 100 years, for a woman, a luxury perfume has been Chanel, Dior at very reasonable prices, and it is therefore very complicated to make consumers understand that, in reality, with 45€, one cannot create a great perfume, one can create a creative perfume, but not create a very beautiful perfume.
. A luxury perfume can cost 150,200 or 250 euros and and it’s sometimes difficult to convince French or German women that they have to spend three or four times as much money as they do on a Chanel product.
Could you tell us more about your new cologne ?
In perfume there are different possible concentrations, from the lightest to the most intense. The lightest being eau de Cologne with 2 to 4% essential oils, then eau de toilette with 6 to 10%, followed by eaux de parfum with 12 to 16% and perfume extracts with concentrations ranging from 20 to 24%. While all this has fallen into disrepute, in the popular consciousness Cologne has remained the lightest concentration.
Nevertheless, if you look at all the prestige perfume brands, everyone has their own Cologne: Fréderic Malle, Francis Kurkdjian, Tom Ford etc. I didn’t have one, but I must say I had trouble because Cologne is historically a combination of a citrus macerate, lemon, bergamot, mandarin, etc. I didn’t have one, but I must say that I had difficulty because Cologne is historically a combination of a citrus macerate, lemon, bergamot, mandarin and a macerate of aromatic plants, notably rosemary, and rosemary dates from Hungarian water, around which there are many myths. I say that because when you create a Cologne, you have to get that harmony between the citrus and the aromatic notes, so rosemary. But when I create the Cologne, I don’t want people to think “this perfume reminds me of such and such a perfume”, none of my perfumes resemble existing perfumes. In the Cologne, I was a bit stymied on this point because when I made a Cologne where I had this harmony between citrus and rosemary, it didn’t bring anything to the market. So I put this project aside for a while and then came the Covid and the first confinement where I was stuck in New York. The moment the borders were reopened, I jumped on the first plane to Paris. In the plane’s bathroom, I suddenly came across a familiar object that I had never noticed before: the large red Clarins bottle of Eau Dynamisante. By reflex, I grabbed it and sprayed it on my face, hands and body, unconsciously, because historically, Cologne was a protection against diseases, bad smells emanating from illnesses, death and even corpses in the 19th century. It was then a gesture of hygiene. The reason for this is not so stupid, since 95% of Cologne is alcohol, so it is a natural disinfectant.
That’s why this Cologne is called Shield of protection, of course the Kologne is signed by me with a K as a nod to Kilian.
How did you finally manage to put together the right notes?
I came back to this dimension of vitality affiliated with Cologne, the source of life. We asked ourselves where this source of life in nature comes from. Life comes from the sap that gives life to trees. So we worked on a sap accord, with green notes, a touch of eucalyptus, mint, but it’s above all a very green and pure accord with this idea of sap and root with a very woody base.
The wood and sap accord brought the originality I was looking for in my Cologne.
Coming back to Kilian Paris, what would be the iconic fragrance of your House?
My number one worldwide, with the exception of the USA and England, is Good Girl Gone Bade. In the Anglo-Saxon markets, Love Don’t Be Shy – a very sexy floral marshmallow – is number one.
The other two emblematic perfumes of the house are Black Phantom – a hyper creative accord of rum, coffee and bitter almond and Angels Share – perhaps my most personal perfume because it is a work around my olfactory memory, that of the cellars of the house of Hennessy. Born a year and a half ago, it is one of those that has grown the fastest.
You mentioned the house of Hennessy, which is inseparable from your name and renowned for its great Cognacs, Do you conceive perfume as one would conceive a Cognac? ?
Personally no but but the process of creating a perfume is quite similar to that of creating a cognac because the cellar masters mix what are called “coupes”, i.e. different eaux de vies of different ages, and therefore different blends. Until 20 or 30 years ago, some perfumers believed in perfume bases. A base can include three raw materials or 200 raw materials and many perfumers mixed bases together. Basically, these bases, which are themselves already very structured perfumes, can be similar to cognac cuts. With us, we really work on the note, so I would say that it’s probably closer to the work of a chef: choosing the quality of the materials, trying to highlight the main ingredient, and then adding touches.
At Icon-Icon we are interested in iconic products, places, experiences, is there a smell, a memory, a place or even an object that you can’t get rid of or that has made an impression on you in your life that you would like to share with us?
I have many scents that follow me. All the women in my family have always worn tuberose perfumes, so for me tuberose is THE FLOWER, the most beautiful raw material, the queen flower. For example, I always have bouquets of tuberose at home. I also have the olfactory memory of my grandfather who smoked a pipe with a tobacco called “Reine Claude” and when I saw him in the morning, there was always this mixture between Eau Sauvage and the freshness of Cologne and the warmth of the tobacco, it is certainly my Proust’s madeleine.
Interview by Sébastien Girard, President of Icon-Icon and Saskia Blanc.
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