{"id":1234458,"date":"2025-12-24T06:08:26","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T03:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1234458"},"modified":"2025-12-24T06:08:26","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T03:08:26","slug":"perfumer-honorine-blanc-on-fluffy-fragrances-and-gucci-gorgeous-gardenia-intense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1234458","title":{"rendered":"Perfumer Honorine Blanc on “Fluffy” Fragrances and Gucci Gorgeous Gardenia Intense"},"content":{"rendered":"
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If you click on links we provide, we may receive compensation.\n<\/p>\n

Perfumer Honorine Blanc on “Fluffy” Fragrances and Gucci Gorgeous Gardenia Intense<\/h1>\n

“I like to break rules.”<\/p>\n

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By<\/span><\/p>\n
Kara Nesvig<\/p>\n
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\nKara Nesvig\n<\/div>\n
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    \nKara is a news writer for Byrdie. She got her start at the (dearly departed) xoVain as one of the site’s core contributors.and currently contributes to Teen Vogue, Brides, Allure, Apartment Therapy and PEOPLE.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
    \nByrdie’s Editorial Guidelines\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
    Published on July 18, 2025 07:00AM<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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    \"perfumer\"perfumer<\/div>\n<\/div>
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    Courtesy of Gucci Beauty\/ Byrdie<\/p>\n

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    Honorine Blanc has a stacked resume. The perfumer has created countless fragrance classics for brands big and small, including Phlur, La Perla, Juicy Couture, Yves Saint Laurent, Est\u00e9e Lauder, and House of B\u014d, and crafted celebrity scents for stars like the Olsens (RIP Nirvana White) and Beyonc\u00e9.\n<\/p>\n

    Blanc has also crafted fragrances for Gucci, another legendary fragrance house with hits like the bombastic \u201800s party scent Rush, the mysterious and sensual Guilty, and the cheery floral Bloom under its belt. In 2021, she helped create the bestselling Flora Gorgeous Gardenia, a deliciously creamy fruity floral with notes of pear, jasmine, and gardenia, and now, she\u2019s been tasked with creating an \u201cintense\u201d version. It\u2019s common for fragrance houses to release more intense flankers of their popular scents, especially for customers who prefer a bigger, bolder sillage or a higher concentration of the key notes. But how do you approach updating such a beloved fragrance? If anyone knows how, it\u2019s Blanc.\n<\/p>\n

    The intense version is an amplified version of the Flora Gorgeous Gardenia we know and love, but it’s also much richer and warmer than its sister scent. Gorgeous Gardenia Intense amps things up with a sweet mandarin top note and lingering sandalwood base for a lush, romantic vibe.\n<\/p>\n

    Ahead, learn more about Blanc\u2019s approach to fragrance, her journey as a perfumer, and the notes she wears when she\u2019s not working.\n<\/p>\n

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    \"Gucci\"Gucci<\/div>\n<\/div>
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    Gucci Beauty<\/p>\n

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    $190 at Sephora<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

    How would you describe your personal fragrance style?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u201cI like to wear fragrances that are feminine, but not in a traditional way\u2026 fragrances that are easy and sensual at the same time with a disruption. I like fragrances with disruption, but I believe in harmony. That means the disruption has to be very well put together. The notion of sensuality is very important for me. I believe a lot in pleasure. I think a fragrance should give me pleasure.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

    How have your scent preferences changed over time? When did you start wearing fragrance?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u201cOh, very, very young. I always loved fragrances. My mom used to wear Guerlain Shalimar. She used to have Shalimar in a drawer, and I used to climb [up to the drawer]. This was, I don’t know, five, six, seven years old. I always love, love, love, loved fragrance and beauty.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

    When did your journey as a perfumer begin?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u201cI think you\u2019re born with it. I’m passionate about flavor, fragrance, flowers. I grew up among gardenia and jasmine. My mom used to cook a lot, so there was a lot of flavor in the house. I love beauty, but I love the creative process. It’s not about me, it’s about my product. I like to be behind the scenes. I can wake up at three o’clock in the morning to fix a fragrance. I work 24 hours. I work with pleasure, not because I have to; it’s because I love it. I like to play between something very sexy and narcotic with something very fragile and feminine. I like to use flavor. I like to break rules, but keeping the harmony of the construction is very important.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

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    Gucci Beauty<\/p>\n

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    Has your creative approach as a perfumer changed? How so?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u201cThe more experience you have, the more freedom you have, the more risks you take. I\u2019m enjoying [this part of my career] a lot. I love the moment where you know what you’re doing, yet you always have surprises. The beautiful part of what I do is you always have moments that you don’t expect because the fragrance is very difficult to control. And then you evolve. You evolve as a person, you evolve as a woman. You evolve your environment. You evolve depending where you live, you evolve with ingredients.\n<\/p>\n

    “Ingredients, odor, fragrance and emotion, they’re very connected. You attach a smell or phrase with a memory. Depending on the memory you have, you’re gonna like the ingredients or not. One of the ingredients [I didn\u2019t like] was sandalwood. And then a couple of years ago, I said, \u2018Okay, I might start playing with them, but my way.\u2019 I take my time. I take time to tame the ingredient, and I do it my way. When I discover new ingredients or play with ingredients that I didn’t like in the past, I start liking it because I treat it my way. I don’t try to do what people did in the past. It’s like taming a horse, for example. You really get this connection between you and the ingredients. I never separate the woman and the perfumer.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

    Is there a note you always use in your work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u201cI love musk. I like woody notes. If you smell my fragrances, you will always see this common denominator; it’s sexuality in a very soft and intense way, because I believe you can do soft and intense. There’s nothing more sexy, more addictive than intense softness.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

    “Many years ago, I created the texture of \u2018fluffy\u2019 [in fragrance]. People used to say, \u2018What do you mean?\u2019 I said, for me, fragrance have textures. I create that texture. You excite all your senses with texture.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

    How would you describe the texture of Flora Gorgeous Gardenia Intense? How does this scent differ from the original?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u201cWhen they asked me to do an intense version of the original, first what do you do? You put in a higher concentration [of ingredients]. But what was very important for me, because of the success of the original\u2014everybody’s still wearing it, I see it everywhere\u2014I wanted to make sure that I kept the DNA of the fragrance. It smells luxurious, yet it’s very light. There is this lightness to it. It’s what they call effortless luxury. When you wear it, you feel confident, elegant, yet it’s not heavy, it’s not fatiguing, it’s very refined.\n<\/p>\n

    “I took the key element of the fragrance, which is a gardenia. It’s beautiful, it’s fragile, it’s green and petal-y. In the intense version, I really wanted to capture the intense section of the petals; gardenia, during the day, it evolves and becomes deeper and richer. So I wrapped it with other flowers that give this intensity, including jasmine. Jasmine has this really intense richness to it. The fragrance on top is very fresh and crisp because of the mandarin. I wanted it to vibrate more, so I put pink pepper. Pink pepper has this crispness to it. It\u2019s very fresh, refreshing, and it’s very elegant, and gives intensity to the freshness.\n<\/p>\n

    “The back of the fragrance is what stays on your skin. The key element has always been patchouli in this fragrance, a trace of patchouli. But I don’t want to push the patchouli more\u2014l don\u2019t want to make it easy or expected. So I wrapped it with the sensuality of natural sandalwood. Sandalwood is creamy, so it goes very well with the creaminess of the petals of the gardenia. One of my favorite ingredients is ambrox. Ambrox is a molecule, one of the most expensive molecule ingredients that we have in our palate, and it gives you this salty, soft, musky, woody, sensual effect on skin, salty and modern. I intensified what the consumer liked about this fragrance, but I made sure that during the whole process, during evolution of the fragrance, you always have this lightness. So we intensify the color, the texture, but there’s always this lightness. This fragrance cannot be too heavy, it can\u2019t be fatiguing. I don’t like fragrances that are too fatiguing because they go against this elegance and sophistication. For me, sophistication of a fragrance is very important.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

    What is Gucci\u2019s fragrance philosophy? How do you go about developing a Gucci fragrance?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u201cThere\u2019s always something different in Gucci. When the original [Flora Gorgeous Gardenia] was created, the flower, the print, it\u2019s ultra chic, but not in a serious way.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

    “My objective was really to create a beautiful fragrance. [Gucci] picked my style, and it’s about a journey. It’s almost like an orchestra. The conductor is going to tell me, \u2018Okay, with the violins, you’re going to go into harmony.\u2019 It\u2019s back and forth; you show an accord, you show something strong, you show something out of the box.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

    “I try to be myself, to create what I like to create, and adapt my style to their brand. It’s not the opposite. I like this back and forth, because if you please too much, you give them something that they have already.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

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    What fragrance notes are you drawn to? What do you wear in your day-to-day life?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u201cI change all the time. I don’t like complicated; I like things that are well put together with beautiful ingredients. I don’t like things that are too dark and too complicated.\n<\/p>\n

    “I’m so intense in my work. I love it so much that I need to wear peaceful fragrances, very light, very fresh. It’s [also] my duty to wear what I’m working on, to make sure I\u2019m giving clients the best. When I finish creating a fragrance, it’s time for me to wear something so I can empty myself. It’s almost like going to a stage of Zen. The problem is, when I wear something, I keep thinking about the construction, so my mind is always working.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

    Is there a scent that you associate with an important time or person in your life?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u201cTo be honest with you, I think I have a lot of them. I travel a lot. I’m always traveling. I just came back from Machu Picchu. I went to Patagonia last year. So I travel a lot, and I try to connect every place I go with an odor, with a smell. This is the power of smell. We realized during Covid how smelling was so important. People who lost a sense of smell\u2026 they were lost.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

    “In the U.S., for a long time before Covid, fewer people were wearing fragrances. Then Covid hit and people woke up and said, \u2018Oh, my God, how important fragrances are.\u2019 And now you see people wearing fragrances and taking more risks and being playful, and they feel alive when they wear fragrances. This made me so happy, because I realized that now they see the importance of fragrance!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    • Fragrance<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

      Source URL: https:\/\/www.byrdie.com\/fragrance-wardrobe-honorine-blanc-11767359<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      If you click on links we provide, we may receive compensation. Perfumer Honorine Blanc on “Fluffy” Fragrances and Gucci Gorgeous Gardenia Intense “I like to break rules.” By Kara Nesvig Kara Nesvig Kara is a news writer for Byrdie. She got her start at the (dearly departed) xoVain as one of the site’s core contributors.and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[83],"class_list":["post-1234458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-byrdie-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1234458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1234458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1234458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1234458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}