The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Imagenes arrived in 2014 from Ésika, a Colombian house operating under the Belcorp cosmetics group. The name translates to "Images" in Spanish, which suggests a fragrance built around a single held picture rather than a narrative arc. The perfumer credited on the composition is Vincent Schaller, a nose who works through the DSM-Firmenich network. The brief here was clear: lean into the floral heart, let the chypre structure carry the weight. What emerged is a composition that treats its two lead notes, ylang-ylang and jasmine, as the entire show. No fruit confections, no sugary undercarriage, no crowd-pleasing vanilla warming the bottom of the formula. The floral heart runs unaccompanied, and the chypre frame holds everything upright beneath it.
What makes this composition distinctive is the way the two lead florals carry the full weight of the formula. Ylang-ylang brings its banana-skin tropical sharpness and its dense, almost oily texture. Jasmine brings the indolic edge, the part that smells alive rather than clean. Together they form a heart that is unmistakable and unsoftened. The chypre structure underneath is what keeps it wearable on skin, because without that moss-and-woods grounding the two flowers would simply float off into something unbalanced.
The evolution
The opening is the brightest part of the ride. Ylang-ylang announces itself loudly, with its characteristic banana-fruit and custard edge cutting through whatever you applied underneath. There's a green, almost metallic snap that suggests the chypre frame is already working. This opening isn't polite. It walks into the room ahead of you. As the composition settles, jasmine takes over. The indolic character, that warm, slightly animalic honey note jasmine is famous for, settles over the ylang-ylang and smooths its sharper edges. The two flowers blur into a single creamy white-floral impression. Anyone standing close to you now smells one thing: petals, and a lot of them. The chypre backbone has quieted, but it's still there, a green hum underneath the floral layer, holding everything in place. As the hours pass, the drydown arrives and stays.
Cultural impact
Imagenes occupies a distinctive place within its launch cohort. As a white floral chypre released in 2014, it leaned into structural perfumery rather than the sweeter, more confectionary territory that dominates much of the regional fragrance market. The composition uses two floral notes, ylang-ylang and jasmine, and refuses to soften them with fruit, vanilla, or gourmand accents. The chypre frame underneath, the moss-and-woods base that grounds the florals, gives the fragrance an architectural quality that sets it apart from the surrounding catalogue.
