Whom You Know Celebrates Our 1,700th Post in Product Alert by Highly Recommending Florabotanica by Balenciaga by Coty Prestige!

Whom You Know is proud to celebrate our 1,700th post in Product Alert with the h

ighly anticipated new fragrance from the Balenciaga luxury brand, Florabotanica, on counters this September exclusively at Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus and rolling out to specialty retailers beginning October 2012 . This experimental rose scent will transport you to the strange and wonderful botanical garden of creator and designer Nicolas Ghesquière, and we highly recommend it.

Balenciaga muse and actress Kristen Stewart will also be featured in the national print campaign this Fall as her rebellious style perfectly embodies the Florabotanica spirit.

Florabotanica is an experimental rose fragrance whose story takes place in a strange and wonderful garden in which you don’t know whether the flowers are innocent or poisonous.The bottles graphic black and white stripes echo a signature dear to Cristóbal Balenciaga. The oversized tube with bold lines plunges into the floral perfume like a laboratory test tube looking to capture the secret essence of flowers. Actress Kirsten Stewart, with her rebellious femininity, is the perfect muse for Florabotanica.

Top: Carnation, Mint

Mid: Turkish Rose, Hemp Leaves

Base: Vetiver Roots, White Amber

Available September 2012 exclusively at Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus and at specialty stores beginning October 2012.

100ml edp $125

…or a tale of mesmerizing flowers

This time he had to leave. A dressmaker whose hands dazzled the world, people came from far and near to touch the hem of his dresses, as they do to see 

a soothsayer. His flamboyant tunics, his Abraham’s gazar, an enchanted fabric that can stand by 

itself, his fabulously constructed jackets that cloaked any woman in an aura of elegance… But he had done everything and lassitude 

had taken over. 

He scattered his dresses and 

original sketches among his friends. He also parted with the paintings that had adorned the walls of 

his house. These told of his Spanish passions and of his initial inspiration, found in the bewitching canvases of Goya, whose singular phrase, “ In nature, there is only black and white ”, 

he kept always in a secret corner of his mind. 

He withdrew deep into a wild forest where nothing would come to awaken his creativity among the hostile foliage. But though he thought he had expelled his imagination, he could not resist making 

a few sketches. He was annoyed with himself for having, yet again, given in to his weakness for drawing. And, without emotion, tore up the beautiful studies into a thousand pieces that soon littered the dark earth. 

The soil was moved by this strange shower of pure lines and swallowed up the fine paper covered in ingenious scribbles… When spring came, ornate shoots that defied the colour palette rose skyward with bold insolence. 

There was talk in neighbouring lands of this remote country and its resplendent colours. 

One day a solitary and unruly young girl went to see for herself if the legend was true. Spirited and mysterious, her pond-coloured eyes pleased the gloomy forest and a path opened before her. 

The dressmaker dared not ask her to leave for she had the inspirational powers of a muse. She would change her name depending on the day and t

he colour of the clouds. Together, they listed all the fantastical plants. Frenzied reds like carnations. Golden stems shot through with amber glints. Green leaves as exhilarating as mint or vetiver. Emerald swathed in purple like caladium leaves. 

Yet which fabulous flower would be the Queen of this audacious garden? The dressmaker concentrated on his most flamboyant drawing. It was not a dress but 

a botanical study. A flower with dainty, soft-edged petals, a passionate crimson heart, a venomous carmine stamen and a corolla fringed midnight- black… It was almost a rose. An imaginary rose. 

An Experimental Rose, Rosa Experimentalis. Its fragrance was captivating. Their herbarium of astounding plants was complete. 

In the morning, the young girl had vanished… In the light of dawn he gathered together their most precious flowers and enclosed them in a bottle that he could 

not resist designing himself. An upright and honest bottle that mirrored his bold stroke and the folds of his geometrically-inspired dresses. And as a garden would now be hidden in this bottle, he obeyed the injunctions 

of his venerated master. “ In nature, there is only black and white ” : therefore it would be the contrast of these two non-colours that would 

be most visible through the liquid made from a strange dew that reminded him of her rain-coloured eyes. 

As the years passed by, people considered the bottle a model of perfection. It exuded a fragrance so incredibly beautiful that all women were bewitched. Three botanists, a

 biologist and four perfumers searched for the secret. But, having analysed it, put it 

in a test tube, submitted it 

to laboratory tests, powerless to explain this invincible wonder, three botanists, a biologist and four perfumers lost their minds. 

Here is the new fragrance from the House of Balenciaga

. A perfume with a fragrance as astonishing as its design, a total sensory experience that its creator, the designer Nicolas Ghesquière, will explain to you himself. 

THE INSPIRATION 

It involved exposing the floral world per se to the vocabulary of perfumery, to almost scientific experiments, to create an unprecedented object in terms of smell and sight. Combining the fantastical and ultra-contemporary aspects of the Balenciaga brand. 

“ There is a real duality in Balenciaga, between classicism and experimentation. For this new fragrance, I wanted to explore this paradox between the pure and the enigmatic further. A few years ago, I designed this 

‘floral collection’. The dresses were covered with flowers, but these flowers were neither charming nor romantic. They structured the whole silhouette. I wanted the flowers in this perfume to express the same idea.” 

— Nicolas Ghesquière 

THE STORY 

It is a strange and wonderful garden in which you do not know whether these flowers are innocent or poisonous. They are magnetic flowers. is an imaginative fragrance name. It evokes the 18th-century botanical gardens in which the most exotic and rarest plant species were displayed. Strange-coloured plants discovered in distant countries brought back 

from their travels by enthusiastic biologists, at the cost of their lives, to create the extraordinary arboretum. 

“ It is a secret garden where you find surprising flowers that surpass the imagination. They are beautiful but are they really that harmless? Flowers can be 

cruel, carnivorous or venomous, contain poisons. What would a perfume that contained the charm and mystery of flowers be like? This is the story that 

we wanted to tell with ”

— Nicolas Ghesquière 

THE ALCHIMISTS 

The astonishing came to life in a four-hand score. The two composers are Olivier Polge and Jean-Christophe Hérault. These two internationally renowned noses have written a music of scents that 

play on two major accords, like a plant world within a world. 

The Vetiver, Amber and caladium leaf accord to create a resonance of mossy and mysterious dark wood. And the Rose, carnation and mint accord like an exhilarating note with juvenile freshness. 

It should be specified that we are not talking about those extremely well-known roses from the Vulgaris Rosacea family. 

It is a hybrid rose born of the olfactory imagination of our two orchestrators. 

We cannot reveal all the secrets of these two floral alchemists, but the Experimental Rose finds its origins in opulent Turkey. To give it a fairytale air, the two 

perfumers have added a formula of psychosensory plants, making it particularly enchanting. This Experimental Rose has the power to endlessly charm. 

“ At first glance, it is a very floral, almost romantic composition. But on closer inspection, a stronger and more obscure character can be discerned. It 

is a perfume that I like to think of as tender and dangerous. An enchanting and provocative scent. ” 

— Nicolas Ghesquière 

THE YOUNG GIRl 

She is the actress Kristen Stewart, who already held us spellbound in David Fincher’s Panic Room and Sean Penn’s Into the wild and 

exploded in Twilight. An incontrovertible star today, she is adored by audiences of all kinds. Yet 

she knows how to maintain her privacy and does 

not play the media game. She is the perfect muse 

for . We like her tetchy youthfulness. Her rebellious femininity and 

pure face. She is romantic and modern. 

“ Kristen Stewart has a real personality. She captivated me when we met a few years ago. I had not forgotten her. She is the perfect embodiment of a certain idea of Balenciaga: that beauty 

that is both pure and uncontrollable. We met 

again for . She is totally this graceful and mysterious figure that symbolises this strange botanical garden. ” 

— Nicolas Ghesquière

THE BOTTLE 

It is a beautiful and surprising incursion by design into perfumery. More than a mere bottle, it is a couture object that completes the experience. 

The highly graphic black and white stripes echo a signature dear to Cristóbal Balenciaga 

and the visions of extremely contemporary cuts 

of which Nicolas Ghesquière is fond in his designs. 

The oversized tube with bold lines plunges into the floral perfume like a laboratory test tube looking to capture the secret essence of flowers. To create a sensory paradox between the rigour of experimentation 

and the poetry of the spirit of plants. 

“ We really put ourselves in the shoes of biologists discovering enigmatic plants whose secret we wanted to uncover. And take samples of the flowers for our research. We created a bottle that would express the whole scientific technique, clean lines and play on mirrors like those slides you find in laboratories. ” 

— Nicolas Ghesquière 

Collection 

Eau de Parfum 

30 ml 

$65 

Eau de Parfum 

50 ml 

$95 

Eau de Parfum 

100 ml 

$125 

Body Lotion 

200 ml 

$50 

Shower Gel 

200ml 

$50  

Available exclusively at Bergdorf Goodman & Neiman Marcus in September 

2012 and at all specialty stores beginning October 2012.