A near-holy paean to the art of perfumery, the antique quality of Gucci Bloom Profumo di Fiori is unashamedly floral
“My world of scent, my universe of perfume, is rich. It keeps me connected with so many things: memories, the past, the thoughts they have prompted. Another world,” Alessandro Michele told AnOther Magazine for the Autumn/Winter 2020 issue. Here, Michele described the inception of his latest Gucci Bloom fragrance, Profumo di Fiori – meaning ‘scent of flowers’ – the first perfume he has developed in its entirety, with the help of master perfumer Alberto Morillas. As such it’s an ebullient olfactory time machine.
While the accompanying Gucci Bloom campaign is a psychedelic blur of magnificent women – actor and director Anjelica Houston, model and designer Susie Cave, actor Jodie Turner-Smith and musician Florence Welch – tripping in an almost demonically magical garden, the perfume conjures something a little more buttoned-up. Here, Michele piled classic floral ingredients – heady tuberose, rich jasmine, orris and ylang ylang – onto woody base notes of sandalwood and resinous benzoin, the effect of which is a rich, antique polish. Heavy and cool, like the stone-clad floors of an old basilica, this opaque scent calls to mind the pungent jars of a Florentine apothecary: hallowed shelves filled with cinders of iris root and nuggets of amber. It is a near-holy paean to the art of perfumery.
“I love strong scents, the smells of nature, the fragrance of flowers,” Michele says. “For some time these types of scents fell out of fashion, but I adore them, as I adore all the things that are no longer in fashion. Because the things that were once in fashion hide a meaning. I was intrigued by the perfume of tuberose – it became the starting point for me, for Gucci Bloom. Tuberoses were the flowers that reminded me of times I would walk with my mother in the afternoons.” Profumo di Fiori is, of course, unashamedly floral – like the iridescent jacquards on Michele’s boxy handbags and synonymous shearling-lined loafers, like the Toile de Jouy Herbarium House print of leaves, cherry branches and flowers that cover the fragrance’s honey-coloured box and has become the Italian fashion house's signature élan, cladding the walls of Gucci stores, and the plates in the Gucci Garden restaurant. Unashamed may be the watchword for this scent, so bold is its evocation of florals.
Quotes taken from an interview with Alexander Fury.
Gucci Bloom Profumo di Fiori is available now.