Byredo: La Tulipe
A Fresh, Minimalist Floral That Feels Like Spring's Kiss
A picture-perfect tulip:
Its bulb like a puffy, pouty pair of lips, glistening with fresh gloss.
Pinkish-red petals stretch upward from a vibrant green stem.
Beneath it, a carpet of fluffy, green, dew-covered grass.
There’s a hint of coy flirtatiousness from spicy freesia in La Tulipe, but the predominant character is one of fresh, watery, silky florals.
The smell fills you with a new version of “cuteness aggression”: you feel like you could crush and crunch all these plants within your fists, if only they weren’t so very pretty.
The imagery and triple entendre in this song by Ai Otsuka is not lost on me—tulips look like lips and sound like “chulip", and in Japanese, “chu” is the onomatopoeic sound of a kiss.
Much like the song, Byredo’s La Tulipe is playful, girlish, and irresistibly cute—a perfect encapsulation of all the sweetness and light this flower represents.
Although tulip is a “fantasy note” in perfumery (tulips don't smell much, so we create a concept of a smell for them in perfumery), Byredo has done a magnificent job of making this scent feel like it really is the true and proper smell of a tulip. This flower's eye-catching appearance stands out so much that people carry a pretty strong idea of what it should smell like, despite the truth being that tulips almost don't smell at all.
Our image of them is all about their modern, minimal, sleek shape—this isn't a frilly or ruffled flower, it's one with a streamlined, tall and rather structured look. Its firm, waxy petals and strong, green shoot-like stems give the impression that this isn't a soft floral, but a fresh one. Tulips are ideal for springtime, because they carry all the features of something new and strong—they represent youth, perhaps?
And when we imagine their scent, all of this sends us in a direction away from too much spice, powder or heavy perfume. Instead, we assume fresh, watery chlorophyll and some cheerful vegetal impressions from the stem. The petals are seemingly cool, crisp and moisture-filled.
Every bit of that is right here in La Tulipe. So, Byredo really did do a masterful job of allowing us to experience this ultra-feminine beauty. It's charming, clean and endlessly optimistic.
