How Carolina Herrera’s 6-Piece Perfume Collection Takes Fragrance Layering to New Levels

“When we talk about fragrance, we talk about women, no?” says designer Carolina Herrera. “It’s the invisible accessory. It gives you a personality, it gives you identity.” Herrera herself has long practiced the art of layering different scents to create a custom result. Now devotees of the house (not to mention Herrera’s inimitable elegance) can do the same with the release of Confidential, a new collection of six perfumes and four essential oils, all designed to be mixed and matched.

Housed in faceted jewel-tone bottles, the perfumes—Herrera Tuberose, Oud Couture, Amber Desire, Neroli Bohème, Burning Rose, Nightfall Patchouli—were created by Herrera’s daughter, Carolina Herrera de Baez, who heads up the house’s fragrance division, as a sort of ode to her mother’s sense of style and her own childhood olfactory memories of New York City and Venezuela, where jasmine vines cascaded along the walls of the family home. The four corresponding layering oils—rose, oud, musk, and sandalwood—come in smaller gold-and-glass bottles; they’re designed to meld and contrast with the various notes in the perfumes, as well as the skin. The collection, de Baez notes, embraces her mother’s love of experimentation. “I remember going to Bloomingdale’s with her when I was a little girl to buy ingredients to create her own fragrances,” she says. “She believes that the most important value is being true to oneself.”

In this spirit, Herrera senior has been testing out various combinations within the collection already; asked to name her favorite scent-oil pairing, she says with a laugh, “I’ve been using all of them and I cannot decide!” She does, however, confess to a special fondness for Herrera Tuberose (“absolutely sensational”), while the oil of oud “mixes very well with all of the perfumes.” Some of the fragrances, she adds, particularly the Burning Rose and Nightfall Patchouli, have even gained an unexpected following amongst men.

As a complement to the olfactory collection, Herrera has also designed six one-off dresses, available for custom order through her atelier, that correspond in color and style to each of the six perfumes and their bottles. “The fashion and the fragrance,” she says simply. “It’s all connected.”

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