Deliciously Scented Weapons of Seduction

Heir to a long line of cognac makers who were pioneers in luxury, Kilian decided to take up the torch of family tradition. Born into one of France’s most illustrious dynasties in fine liquors, he translates sensibility and vision inherited from his ancestors into the realm of perfume. A culture of pursuing ultimate luxury and his audacious, rule-breaking approach define his namesake brand: KILIAN.

His childhood haunts included the family cellars in Cognac. Before graduating from CELSA, he wrote a thesis on the semantics of scent, in search of a ‘language’ common to gods and mortals. Remembering the “angels’ share” as part of his heritage, he was led into the world of perfumery. The “angels’ share” is what the House of Hennessy calls the percentage that – inexplicably – evaporates from cognac cellars, like an offering to the gods.

Many of Kilian’s fragrances today carry this childhood memory as they are reminiscent of the sugar in the alcohol and the wood of the cognac barrels.

When Kilian speaks about his perfumes, he’ll “stumble across” literary or cinematographic references, or sensual allusions (to good food, or the skin), as if his work were constantly (deliberately) set in vibration by this referencing system. These are the rungs of the ladder leading to his perfumes, which do not spring from a cloud, or a nose or a pistil, but from what makes us better: a museum, the work of a filmmaker or composer, an evening out, a restaurant, another person.

While art leaves its mark, perfume has an inherently immaterial dimension. The top notes, the heart notes, citrus or explosive. But there must something for the eye to take in: the bottle, the material, the vaporiser; and the box, the bed in which it lies, like an echo, an apparition, a transition to the real. Kilian and his artisans opted to risk coming down to earth, to work with silver, gold, Calais lace and lacquer; to seek ways to recharge (and not throw away); to dare to interpret what they dream, draw out the essence, immortalise. To translate with the risk of betraying, but also to reconnect. Find oneself.

Luxury, like happiness, is the blurry notion of something good that happens. The art of Kilian is to capture it, like a whiff of the times, and make it last. His perfumes are messages conveyed in a mist, or a gust, to defy fate, and that may just take hold, endure; slide into a heady, addictive eternity. Luxury should always be lasting, and that is a voluptuous challenge, to capture what is ephemeral to better savour it. To slow down time and enhance the sensations. To go back to the origins of perfume, when bottle and box were its coat of arms; the embodiment of a spirit.

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