BALENCIAGA RESURRECTS LE DIX WITH NINE MORE SCENTSATIONS
Written By: Khansaa Houlbi
An olfactory reboot that turns archival couture into pure aura.
September is the month of sharpened pencils, sharpened cheekbones, and sharpened expectations. Fashion is already bracing for Pierpaolo Piccioli’s Balenciaga debut in Paris, but before the curtains rise, the house has found another way to seduce us: an olfactory comeback with ten perfumes strutting out at once. Yes, Le Dix, the 1947 fragrance that started it all, has been resurrected, and it has not come alone. It arrives with nine companions, each one dressed to kill, and the effect is pure tens – or dare I say dix – across the board.
Courtesy of Balenciaga
Le Dix | Courtesy of Balenciaga
The story begins with Le Dix, Balenciaga’s first fragrance, launched in 1947 and then lost to the fog of history. Archivists, in their most glamorous version of private detectives, spent fifteen years on the case. Their prize was a single bottle in an American collection, aged, its label cracked and its iris-and-leather heart still faintly beating. From this ghost, a resurrection was staged.
The bottles are couture miniatures, meticulous replicas of the original 1947 design, with a globular stopper and hand-tied ribbon intact, finished with deliberate patina as though plucked from Cristóbal’s dressing table. With modern technology conjuring the trace of time, these flacons become artefacts: elegant, refillable, industrial grey on the outside, heritage flowing within. Years have been bottled, lacquered, and tied with a bow.
Archival Le Dix | Courtesy of Balenciaga
Archival Le Dix Ad | Courtesy of Balenciaga
Cristóbal | Courtesy of Balenciaga
To be Confirmed | Courtesy of Balenciaga
No Comment | Courtesy of Balenciaga
Inside, the spectacle only deepens. Le Dix returns as a powdery iris, glamorous as a compacted snapped open under golden lights. The collection then unfurls like a spectrum, moving from luminous clarity through smoke-tinted shadows, until it reaches a finale as black and opaque as obsidian. Each fragrance stands as its own creation, sculpted in scent the way Cristóbal once sculpted fabric: volumes cocoon, sillages expand, silhouettes surround. Together, they’re archetypes from the Balenciaga cosmos bottled for modern vanities.
So while fashion holds its breath for Piccioli’s debut, Balenciaga offers a prologue already scented with iris, smoke, roses, and whispers of the past. This house has always been about silhouette and aura, and now it has taken aura itself, bottled it, and tied with a ribbon. Ten perfumes, ten stories, ten perfect tens.
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