Hanae Mori / ハナヱ モリ
Hanae Mori / ハナヱ モリ
127 votes
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The blueberry and blackcurrant crash in almost immediately with genuine fruit tartness, slightly tart-skinned rather than jammy, whilst blackberry adds a briery green edge. Woodland strawberry softens this trio with something subtly anaemic—floral-strawberry rather than confectionery. Within minutes, you're holding crushed berries against warm skin.
By the first hour, the jasmine begins its creamy infiltration, creating a peculiar sweet-tart dialogue with lingering berry notes that now read almost wine-like. The ylang ylang's spiced warmth emerges, and the Bulgarian rose acts as mediator—the berries don't vanish, they merely recede into the background, allowing the florals their moment without surrendering the composition's fruity skeleton.
What remains is largely whisper territory. The sandalwood and almond wood dry everything considerably, introducing a peppery, almost woody austerity. The rose persists longest, finally reading genuinely floral rather than fruited, whilst the berries and jasmine fade almost imperceptibly. By the fourth hour, you're left hunting for it, though this fleeting quality rather suits its butterfly nomenclature—ephemeral by design rather than accidental shortcoming.
Butterfly by Hanae Mori arrives as a deceptively delicate confection that immediately contradicts its fragile name. Bernard Ellena constructs something altogether more intriguing than a simple fruity floral: the quartet of berry notes—blueberry, woodland strawberry, blackberry, and blackcurrant—creates a jammy, almost tart opening that refuses to play innocent. These aren't the synthetic, candy-bright berries of mass-market fragrances; there's a natural astringency to them, a slight earthiness that suggests actual fruit rather than their perfumised caricature.
What makes this composition particularly clever is how the floral heart—jasmine, ylang ylang, and Bulgarian rose—doesn't attempt to soften the berries so much as dialogue with them. The jasmine emerges as creamy and slightly indolic, whilst the ylang ylang brings its characteristic spiced-butter richness. The rose sits somewhere between these two, neither herbal nor rosy-proper, but acting as a pivot point. The result feels neither wholly fruity nor entirely floral; instead, these accords create something gourmand without tipping into dessert territory.
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3.6/5 (93)