dsm-firmenich reimagines floral fragrances in new olfactive experience
These efforts reinforce the company’s strategy of connecting fragrance creation with culture, visual art, and consumer insight.
SWITZERLAND – dsm‑firmenich has launched “Flowers Are Watching Us,” an artistic and olfactive experience unveiled in Paris that reimagines floral perfumery by intertwining science, culture, and innovation.
The activation brings together the company’s perfumers and contemporary artists to challenge traditional portrayals of flowers as static objects or cultural symbols, presenting them instead as living, adaptive beings that respond to their surroundings. Through a multisensory dialogue in which fragrance and imagery serve as living media, the project seeks to reshape how florals are seen, experienced, and remembered, moving beyond replication toward bold reinterpretation.
Jonathan Simon, president of Global Fine Fragrance at dsm‑firmenich, explains that the initiative was designed to question conventional thinking about florals and to open new creative territories by uniting olfactive expertise with leading artistic voices, reaffirming the company’s role in shaping perfumery’s future.
Central to the Paris activation is the exclusive fragrance Fleur de Papier, created by principal perfumer Amandine Clerc‑Marie and perfumer Coralie Spicher in collaboration with Jacquet.
The scent showcases a new captive molecule, Heliobliss, alongside Vulcanolide, and leverages Dried Ylang Flower Firgood extraction and Evening Primrose NaturePrint technology to illustrate how modern ingredients and sustainable technologies can deliver precision and creative freedom in floral compositions.
The experience is further enriched by a curated photography series exploring themes of impermanence, transformation, and the intersection of humans and nature, as well as a site‑specific installation by French sculptor and designer Junior Fritz Jacquet that plays with light, texture, and movement to engage physical space and materiality.
Abstract porcelain sculptures by Paris‑based Studio Ranarivelo, inspired by iconic floral signatures from fragrances such as Anaïs Anaïs by Cacharel, Pleasures by Estée Lauder, Flower by Kenzo, and Good Girl Gone Bad by Kilian, extend the narrative that florals can be read as evolving, expressive forms rather than fixed motifs.
Flowers Are Watching Us also serves as an homage to dsm‑firmenich’s century‑long heritage in floral innovation, highlighting historic molecules like Iralia, featured in Guerlain’s Mitsouko and Chanel N°5, and Hedione, present in Dior’s Eau Sauvage and Estée Lauder’s Pleasures.
Currently, that legacy is advanced through technologies such as Firgood extraction, NaturePrint capture, and new ingredients like Heliobliss, positioning the company as a key architect of the next chapter in floral perfumery and signalling a shift toward contemporary signatures aligned with evolving consumer desires.
Following its Paris debut, the activation is set to travel internationally, with planned stops in Barcelona, São Paulo, New York, and Shanghai.
The initiative fits within dsm‑firmenich’s broader program of culture‑linked scent experiences, including Sensorium’s “Attention Seoul: Living (In)Visible” and the Connect: Future You exhibition in Jakarta, reinforcing the company’s strategy of connecting fragrance creation with culture, visual art, and consumer insight.
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