Disclosure: I’ve always detested the Tom Ford fragrance look, a garbled Art Deco thing, half cod-Egyptian Aida prop, half Beirut hairdresser. But one must look beyond appearances, and long experience has taught me that fragrance design is fraught with misunderstandings that can disconnect medium from message. Some years back, the heavy Tom Ford look came with heavy fragrances of the type that made you wonder whether your liver could take one more sniff. These days, the style is lighter, simpler, more transparent, more humorous—in short, more niche.
The fragrances, composed by expert perfumers at major oil houses and painstakingly art-directed by such luminaries as Karyn Khoury, are exactly what you would expect: polished, clever, even interesting, making good use of materials only available to the likes of Givaudan and IFF. However, there remains a small problem. They are a total ripoff. In the UK, the 50 ml bottle of Private Blend (how naff can a name get?) sells for £220, whereas my Private Nose tells me there’s something like £100 per kg formula cost in most of them. At EDP concentration, a kilo of oil will give you approximately five litres of fragrance, and we can all do the math.
Reviews for paying subscribers: Café Rose, Oud Minérale, Vanilla Sex, Soleil de Feu, Myrrhe Mystère, Grey Vetiver, Cherry Smoke, Electric Cherry.
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