Flower By Kenzo L'Absolue
Kenzo (2022)

The original Flower was an abstract floral – but there's nothing unusual about that, people have been doing abstract florals since No5 launched the Chemical Age of perfumery.

Flower, with it's symbol the poppy – which smells of nothing, could have been almost anything, but Alberto Morillas produced a confection that was white thick-powdery and fatty-sweet; as much Suet Pudding as Platonic Flower.
It had a dense lushness that echoed Sophia Grojsman's peaches & cream florals, a hint of the Chanel masterpiece by Ernest Beaux, and was redolent of bouquets like Ivoire and Arpège.
But Flower (2000) wasn't the first to reintroduce abstraction, it had been broached some eight years earlier when Issey Miyake asked for a perfume that smelled of water. So much for innovation.

And now, fast forward to l'Absolu (2022) which takes the meaning of 'chemical age' to new and overwrought depths.
l'Absolu is powered by the red fruits typical of current highstreet feminines, grossly powerful synthetics that radiate like nuclear candyfloss and sting your nose if you get too close.
On approaching the paper strip after an hour or so, it's clear the fallout has slackened enough to let the rest of the profile come through.
It becomes evident that the body of Flower hasn't changed that much but is now more anonymous than it used to be, and while there are orange flower, rose and the inevitable vanilla, if they are the costly absolutes of natural origin they can't be there in anything but homeopathic doses.
The overall impression is synthetic nastiness.

It's the same approach to perfume that was behind the chemical nightmare Kenzo World – take a banal idea and crank it up with powerful cheap synthetics; cut the cost and boost the volume to eleven.
And then, seize upon anything that ships an average amount of product and flanker it to death with more and more overload.

Flower the Absolute Crap.

Ugh...ever since "Flower Tag", Kenzo has decided to use the Flower brand to knock out as many generic pieces of junk at breakneck speed.

This has no saffron, no reminiscence of the original Flower, and no "absolue of anything". Just a junky fruity-floral with a huge dose of one of those nauseating woody-ambers.

Did Alberto Morrilas finish with the true Flower variations? Are there no more ideas to make it different? I doubt it. Laziness and yet another sell-out for Kenzo.