September 15, 2025 |
You can smell it in the air, the scent of an archive looming large. Because there’s a definite trend towards revisiting the past when it comes to fragrance, a sort of move that marketing speak might call ‘reversing into the future’. Because just as with fashion, these days if a brand has a rich perfume heritage it can draw on, then it’s dusting it off and getting it front and centre once again.
Or, in the case of Balenciaga, the return of its iconic fragrance Le Dix was the result of a 15-year search by the house’s archivists until they discovered an original bottle of this particular perfume legend first created in 1947 by Cristóbal Balenciaga for the Maison he founded in 1917. The name, Le Dix, refers to the 10 Avenue George V, the address of the original Balenciaga couture salon, atelier, and perfume boutique in Paris and where the house still holds its couture shows today.
But time and tide moves even the classics on, so this return is necessarily a ‘reverential reconstruction’, a modern take of the house’s first fragrance that fuses the house’s past with the present. And Le Dix takes on a bigger role: it works as the anchor for a bigger collection of 10 perfumes in total that have all been designed with the idea of pushing fragrant boundaries. All are housed in refillable glass flacons which have been faithfully reconstructed from the original Le Dix bottle and are housed in packaging which has been given the patina of age.
Le Dix itself has been revitalised by blending iris absolute with innovative isolated iris aldehydes alongside elegant notes of violet leaf absolute and incense essential oils to make this classic more of a renewal rather than a return. Alongside it in the collection is No Comment, a resinous woody concoction with Spanish pine needles and synthetic green molecules; Getaria, a summery blend of salty marine, citrus, and amber; Twenty Four Seven, an enveloping vanilla-woodiness with added intense amber and musk; To Be Confirmed, a floral kaleidoscope blended with Silverneedle tea designed to creates the signature Balenciaga Tulip silhouette in fragrance form; Muscara, south American ambrette smudges with iris to represent a bold kohl-lined stare and a polished sheen; 100%, a maximal floral with rose and a metallic mood that merges couture feels with the avant garde; Extra, a vivacious spicy, pink peppery and leathery warm fragrance; Cristóbal, radiates gravitas like the House’s founder with oud, pachouli, and oak moss; and Incense Perfumum, much as it sounds, is a smoky, warm incense with cedarwood and Spanish labdanum resin.
Whichever you choose, if you can, from the house that so revolutionised the shape of things, there’s now a wardrobe of fragrance offering a new kind of silhouette, one that isn’t worn but one surrounds instead.
Photography courtesy of Balenciaga.
