Kenzo Jungle L’Elephant ad (1996)

In these weeks where everything here in Italy is locked-down, most of the people are working from home, avoiding travel and crowded places for public safety reasons.  Living in a small flat can really become oppressive and you can guess going out to the closest supermarket for groceries or in the backyard for a breath of fresh air doesn’t feel exactly like an escape.

Thankfully a secluded perfumista can travel through the miracle of fragrance. Gallivanting with my nose has saved me many times while having no time or money in the past. I can close my eyes, inhale and reach for fragrant escapes in a bottle.

The Dream by Henri Rousseau that inspired Kenzo Takada for his Jungle  boutique

Olfactory memory doesn’t lie: the smell of hand sanitizers brought me back to the early 1990s with the outbreak of another obscure virus and the disinfected minimalism fragrance  wave it brought. I couldn’t help rid myself of this memory by wearing one of the few scents from that era that sung “more is more and less is a bore”.  While everybody was embracing safe sheerness back in time, a few creators were trying to escape the ennui beating new paths out of the hedonistic sensuality of the 1980s and the calone-laden freshness. The best exotic destination your nose could reach back then was the astonishing Kenzo Jungle L’Elephant created by Master perfumers Jean-Louis Sieuzac and Dominique Ropion. Still taking no prisoners like the first day, after almost 25 years, a few tweaks and a renaming (simply to Kenzo Jungle after the discontinuation of Kenzo Jungle Le Tigre) it’s become a classic and well deserves to enter the Modern Masterpieces hall of fame.

Brandi Quinones in the Kenzo Jungle Spring-Summer 1996 ad

Among my favorite fashion designers  from that era was Japanese-French Kenzo Takada who bears a special place in my heart along with the Italian Romeo Gigli. Before selling or closing their houses to disappear from the fashion landscape, both released ethereal beauties with an intense magnetism and outfits  reminiscent of ancient Athens as well as the Edo period Japanese markets. Kenzo in particular was a master in mixing French effortless elegance with  the Japanese sense for color, intricate silk prints and geometric cuts. This globetrotting maximalist also reflected in perfumes starting from the first ones, the banana leaves laden chypre King Kong and  the eponymous Kenzo by Françoise Caron with its green tuberose ikebana, but Kenzo Elephant is the  suited for the globalized urban jungle so well embodied by the ‘90s multi ethnic supermodels like Brandi Quinones and Chrystele Saint-Louis Augustin.

 Mango chutney ©Elise Bauer

A heady, funky white floral bouquet laden in Indian spices and ripe mango chutney, Kenzo Jungle L’Elephant was totally à rebours and offered contemporary women a more laid-back sister of Shiseido Féminité du Bois (another CaFleureBon modern masterpiece from Pierre Bourdon, 1992) sharing the same ambery cedarwood backbone. Yet the stellar duo of Ropion and Sieuzac infused it with a joyful radiance thanks to brand-new take on intoxicating feminine masterworks like Diorama (Edmond Roudnitska, 1949)

Christian Dior Diorama ad by René Gruau (1955)

Since the Elephant was Kenzo’s good-luck charm, Kenzo Jungle L’Elephant needed to be easier to wear-  a complex fruit salad with juicy mango hiding troubling melons and plums redolent of the mythical prunol base. This pulpiness balances the dry, almost medicinal spices, the human warmth of cumin and the minty cardamom bridging the greenery of tuberose and ylang-ylang. Moreover there’s a part marzipan and pistachio baklava lusciousness growing on skin from the heart notes on, winking to gourmand comfort plus a licorice laced dash in the heart. But oh, all of this pairs so well  with the  Japanese Temple-like  drydown of the incense muskiness of cashmeran and sandalwood like cheese on a toast.

Vintage Prunol base from Fabriques De Laire ©Symrise

It’s no wonder the overall performance is terrific, anticipating today’s sillage monsters. Dominique Ropion was quoted in Vogue in 2015, “It was inspired by techno music. They wanted a perfume so powerful you could smell it when you walked into the building. And their offices were on the fifth floor.” Of course its success relies on a stellar duo of perfumers, but people tend to forget a scent development process is a team job where also Creative directors and marketing figures are involved, and in this case it’s worth mentioning them given their daring vision.

 Céline Verleure © Luc Lapôtre

“Perfumes creation became a passion when I entered the Kenzo Perfumes Company in 1993. I had the opportunity to work with the Creative Director & CEO of the brand, Pierre Broc, (he was 65 years old at that time) and he taught me about creating fragrances that were bold, did not use focus groups nor were  they defined by marketing targets. It was working with Pierre Broc that I developed my appreciation of sculptured bottles and delicate raw materials”, remembers Kenzo Parfums former Marketing Director and Olfactive Studio creative director Céline Verleure in an exclusive interview with our Editor in Chief Michelyn Camen.

Kenzo Jungle L’Elephant innovative packaging by Joël Desgrippes and Marc Gobé

This artistic vision also impacted the distinctive packaging and is the outcome of a tight collaboration of the French designer Joël Desgrippes and Marc Gobé with Kenzo Takada. Aimed to communicate the essence of both Paris-based fashion designer’s colorful, vibrant personality and his aesthetic vision, self-described as exotic, luxurious, surprising and sensual, the bottle for Elephant setting the pure lines of the glass against the figural metal cap marked also a shift in the visual expression from flora to fauna, with Le Tigre and a masculine Zebra completing in the Jungle trilogy. The box  was the real groundbreaking element setting a precedent in the perfume industry for the connection to the catwalks and the iconic “Jungle Jap” boutique in Galerie Vivienne, Paris featuring naïve jungle interiors Kenzo painted himself in the 1970s.  The same way the original box was meant to fold out like an origami creating a miniature stage set for the animal.

Notes for Kenzo Jungle L’Elephant include Mandarin, Cardamom, Cumin, Clove, Ylang-Ylang, Licorice, Mango, Heliotrope, Patchouli, Vanilla, Amber and Cashmeran.

This review is based on a personal sample of Kenzo Jungle L’ Elephant. My opinions are my own.

Ermano Picco, Editor and perfume expert