K de Krizia Krizia 1980 Eau de Toilette

Discovering a chypre from the early 1980s that you've never tried is dicey. While it's new to me, it's by no means a new perfume, and has lived, loved and likely been reformulated a number of times, probably fatally. Hand a new fumie a current bottle of Diorella, she'll sniff and then look at you and say, "This is the shit you've all been talking about?" And she'd be right to ask. The current stuff isn't anything to rave about, or really even discuss. 

There's a whole generation of fumies for whom the the tragedy of reformulation means that their Miss Dior Chérie (or whatever it's called at this point) has been tampered with and their Badgely Mischka has been unceremoniously discontinued. 

IFRA (International Fragrance Association) regulations diminish the perfumer’s palette. However you come down on the ethics, evidence and outcomes of their restrictions, the IFRA hinders perfumers and takes perfumes away from those who relish them. 

The fun for all of us, though, is finding what slips through the cracks.

K de Krizia (perfumer, Maurice Roucel) starts and remains beautiful.  There's a bit of a dry fruit feeling upfront, and an appropriate amount of Amber in the far dry down, but all the way along this baby is a soaring floral chypre. What seem like aldehydes provide the lift off, but once at altitude it's the cold flowers that give buoyancy. I don't know the ratio of oakmoss to treemoss to [insert mossy analogue], and god only knows what has been done to modulate the other toxic aromachemicals like bergamot, labdanum, but K de Krizia passes all the functional tests of a chypre.  It's dry like a good martini, it's florals are buttery yet sharp in tone, and it makes me want to take it in like a long drag on a cigarette.  Now THAT to me is a chypre. 

K reminds me quite a bit of Miss Dior. Or at least the reformulation circa 2005 that I have. God knows how many variations of Miss Dior are out there.  The floral tone to the two is similar. The petals aren't so much dried as freeze dried and the effect makes them bite back a bit when you sniff your wrists. 

Your gift at the end of the day of a wearing of K is a starched soapy climax that seems as thought it might be hissing at you. If you like chypres and like the floral tone that Ivoire de Balmain strikes, try K de Krizia. I found a 100 ml bottle of edp for the price of one snort of an overpriced niche perfume. 

One for any list of under-appreciated, inexpensive darlings like Ivoire, Rochas Tocade, Bal à Versailles, Geoffrey Beene Grey Flannel and EL Azurée. 

This was the perfume that put Maurice Roucel on the map -- a dark floral chypre that Luca Turin identifies as an homage to "the world's most expensive perfume." I first encountered it (in the perfume concentration) in Paris in the early 1980s on the dressing table of slightly bohemian but still impeccably turned out Frenchwoman. Then I thought it was the most lovely perfume I'd ever smelled, better than the No. 5 with which I'd grown up. Poor K has grown tatty over the years and reformulations; how the beautiful have fallen.

Peaches and cream used to be a thing in perfumery.
This is Maurice Roucel's version from the early 80's. It's a pink floral, thick and creamy with peach and a whiff of tuberose.
There are aldehydes, which lead Michael Edwards to call it a soft floral. Along with moss, they can be used to give an edge to a profile, in the same way that Roucel uses magnolia with its silky petal and dark bitter nuance.
On paper, there's a fantastic range of textures in K : syrupy, fluffy, castor sugar, aldehydes, dusty-woody and waxy ambergris, and as these merge into powdery-versus-sharp, a complex fruity-floral takes the stage. This leads down to a sweet powdery base with a funky animal facet and the mossy chypre note.
It seemed like Roucel set the mould for this type of bosomy floral, one that was still being used by the end of the decade with Spectacular (1989) a similar type of aldehydic tuberose with peach, amber and incense (but not half as good).
K was great stuff, but after a decade of this kind of thing it's no wonder people wanted a break from the erotic charge. There's only so much a guy can take...

When you dab this on your skin you know exactly when you are… you are in the eighties. The blast of aldehydes and the very recognizable hyacinth/peach mix is like opening a magazine in which every model wears shoulder pads, strong colours and poodle curls. I have a big splash which I treasure, mainly because I know it will never run dry. Not because I do not wear it but because it takes so little of the juice to make me smell of it - all day long. I suppose that either you like it or you hate it. I love it, though. This is one of the true eighties: big, loud and awfully charming.
Year 2, 267/365

The bold and exuberant K de Krizia is a gem from Maurice Roucel's oeuvre, highlighting all that was de rigueur at the time of its release, done to perfection. Dizzying aldehydes? Check. Bitter, mean green florals? Check. Mounds of moss? You got it. And a soupçon of civet? Covered over it all like a decadent fondant. There's even peachy lactones, ripe fruit, and spices. It's a heavenly aroma that's like ambrosia and nectar to my nose.

For some reason I immediately imagined Grace Jones demanding her lover to "wear this! Or ELSE." It's that fierce and ferocious. Make no mistake though, it's absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, it just wasn't made for these times, and this was discontinued after some less than forgiving reformulations. One may find something comparable in the realms of "niche" or "artisan" perfume today, but with someone like Roucel at the helm, it would be difficult to reproduce.