A great perfume is a great story: Kilian Hennessy

The founder of luxury perfume brand Kilian Paris along with Estee Lauder's Rohan Vaziralli speak about its India launch, storytelling through fragrances and building legacy in a competitive market

By Naini Thaker Forbes India Staff

Published: Mar 6, 2025 03:37:26 PM IST

Updated: Mar 6, 2025 05:17:59 PM IST

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(L to R) Estee Lauder’s Rohan Vaziralli and Kilian Hennessy, founder, Kilian Paris; Rohan Vaziralli's image: Swapnil Sakhare for Forbes India

Known as the ‘master of scents’, Kilian Hennessy launched his fragrance brand, Kilian Paris, in 2007. Born into one of France’s most illustrious dynasties in fine liquors, Hennessy chose to create his legacy by getting into the business of perfumes. In 2016, luxury group Estee Lauder Companies acquired the brand that has since expanded to various geographies. On Thursday, the company announced the launch of Kilian Paris in India.

When Hennessy started in 1995, he began by working with fashion designers such as Alexander McQueen in the Gucci group and Giogrio Armani in the L'Oreal group. Around the same time he realised there was nothing new happening in the perfume industry. “I think customers were tired of smelling the same perfumes over and over again that were being offered to them by all the big groups… they were thirsty for creativity again,” he says. This period then allowed a generation of creative directors like Hennessy to create their brands, and experiment with different scents and new formulas. “I believe in having a wardrobe of scents. I choose my scent of the day based on my mood, the way I am dressed and the personality I want to project,” he says, embodying the same vision for his brand.

Hennessy along with Rohan Vaziralli, general manager at ELCA Cosmetics Private Limited (the India affiliate of the Estée Lauder Companies), speak with Forbes India about the India launch, storytelling through fragrances and more. Edited excerpts:

Q. Kilian Paris is known for its storytelling approach to fragrances. How important is the narrative in your creations, and how do you see fragrance as a medium for telling stories?

Kilian Hennessy: It is essential for me. I believe that a great perfume is a great story—as a creator, I wouldn’t even know where to start, if I didn’t know the emotions I’m trying to convey. If you look at the movie industry, can you imagine a director choosing his actors and actresses without a script. It's not even conceivable. This is why if you don’t have a guiding emotion through the creation process, you are creating in the dark.

In the perfume industry, it’s exactly the same—the actors and actresses of our industry are the perfumers. And perfumers always have a style, a way of writing a formula. Some perfumers write short formula, 10 to 15 ingredients, where the emotion is much more raw, much more direct. Others like to have a much more detailed formula with 60 to 100 ingredients. For me, when I start on a new scent, the first thing that comes is the script, which is the name, and the name is my guiding principle. Sometimes, it can go the other way—it starts with an experience, and that happens when I travel… I love discovering new flavours, which eventually lead to a new scent.

Q. What are your expectations from the India launch, and why launch in India now, after all these years?

Rohan Vaziralli: If you look at the Estee Lauder companies' portfolio of brands that we're working on, within fragrance, Kilian Paris is at the forefront of it in terms of luxury fragrance today. A generation of perfumers that Kilian spoke about, where perfumers are able to express themselves, come with a much greater sense of creativity.

We are starting to see this trend in India as well, given the access that customers have to global content. There is a huge uptick in consumers wanting to explore niche fragrances. You'll be surprised that people are willing to pay these prices for fragrances because they want to create a signature scent.

Q. Given how price sensitive the Indian audience is, how will pricing change for India?

Vaziralli: There is no difference. We try and follow a corridor, and try to make sure that pricing remains fairly consistent. We are not passing on the duties of the entire 35 percent on to the Indian consumers.

Q. How do you deal with competition in the market?

Hennessy: I’m competitive. I want to be number one in every store, otherwise I’m not happy. If I'm constantly looking at what my competitors are doing—why a particular perfume is successful, and maybe that's what the customer wants—then that remains in my mind subconsciously. I don't want that. I want to be able to create and express through a perfume.

My job is to be curious, to ensure quality is on point, and keep checking out the new ingredients that are available. My internal creative process matters the most to me. I don't like to copy trends—if the big trend is rose [scent], I'm going to make sure that that's not what I'm doing. I'm not going to go where the trend is, because that's usually where most of the crowd is. But to emerge through the crowd is much more complex.

Q. What are your plans for market distribution and expansion in India?

Vaziralli: Given the position of the brand, we want to make sure that we can represent the brand correctly. So, we are selective in the number of doors that we're going into. We're doing a couple of doors with TIRA, the most beautiful expression of the brand would be at the Jio World Plaza—very high-end in terms of consumer experience, and also in terms of how the brand is represented. We are doing a few doors with Nykaa, given the share of the beauty consumers that are shopping on the channel. Then, we have niche perfumeries such as Maison Des Parfums, which is present in high-end malls. Wherever we are opening, we want to ensure that we are, you know, capturing top position in terms of the luxury fragrance market quickly.

Q. The Hennessy family is synonymous with excellence and heritage. How important was it for you to bring those values into the creation of Kilian Paris? In what ways do you feel your brand reflects both your family’s values and your personal vision?

Hennessy: The family's values are embedded within me. Obviously, I don't try to copycat what has been done by my eight generations of Hennessy for the cognac brand.

Growing up, I’ve always heard my grandfather talk about two important elements when it comes to luxury brands—one is quality and the other is patience. These are key, and you have to let a brand grow and evolve at its own pace. Somebody asked me one day, what is success for you? Well, success for me would be that when I die, my brand will still be alive. So, for me, it’s about building this legacy.