On The Pulse

Carolina Herrera shines the spotlight on one of the most decadent, animalic and polarising of perfumery ingredients and explores its connection with India, finds PARIZAAD KHAN SETHI

- Parizaad khan sethi

Every fashion house holds the codes of its founders close, and at Carolina Herrera none have been more enduring than jasmine. There’s been a jewellery collection dedicated to the flower, stylised graphics of the bloom find themselves printed onto silk garments and, most important of all, there are the fragrances.

Right from the first fragrance in 1988—Carolina Herrera for Women— jasmine has left its unmistakable footprint on many of the brand’s juices. So, it’s fitting that Blond Jasmine, the star fragrance of the new Confidential Eaux de Toilette collection, is both a tribute to the doyenne of the couture house as well as an olfactory love song to her favourite flower.

For Carolina Herrera de Baez, daughter of the senior Ms Herrera and creative director of the House of Herrera fragrances, creating this perfume involved embarking on a journey— both geographically and metaphorically. “Jasmine has always been in my life. It reminds me very much of my mother. I took it for granted because I always smelled it growing up. When I started working in perfumes it became an important part of my work without knowing why. And then I figured out it was a very early olfactory memory for me and it’s been a discovery looking back,” she says.

Herrera de Baez went on a pilgrimage to “visit her jasmine” at the source in Coimbatore. “It was so interesting for me to see the life cycle: the land and plantations, handpicking the flowers in the morning, the markets they go to, and the extraction and distillation at the plants. I loved that when we picked it in the morning it didn’t smell and then at 7pm, whoosh! It’s narcotic!”