Every wonderful once in a great while, the passions of my measly personal life align with the artistic creation of one of my heroes. When it was announced that Tom Ford was releasing a new Private Blend that harkened to the early days of that line’s original potency, I was intrigued. After a spell of sweeter and lighter stuff (‘Lost Cherry’ and ‘Bitter Peach’, neither of which I adored) a return to the pungent, darker aspects that made his best stuff so beautiful was a welcome notion. Even better was the notice that explained this fragrance would feature the somewhat polarizing scent of Palo santo – a sacred wood used for incense and meditation – which is precisely how I knew it.
Legend has it that the scent of Palo santo smoke is often acrid and off-putting to those who have spiritual issues that they still need to work out, and as they address and acknowledge them in repeated meditation sessions, the scent becomes more and more enjoyable. This was very much my experience with Palo santo; the first time I smelled it, in a Tibetan store in Cambridge, MA, I thought it was horrendous. That was many years ago, when aspects of my life – at least the ones that I had never fully dealt with – were appreciably horrendous. Returning to that store, I still found the scent objectionable the next few times I visited.
The first time I lit a stick of Palo santo at the beginning of my meditation journey, it was challenging, but even without consciously working things out in my mind, the last few years seemed to have shifted how I was reacting to the smell. As my days of mediation went by, the scent became something that calmed and centered me before each session, and I eventually came to love it. Whether that’s simply the familiarity taking away its sharp edges, or some deeper transformation, I cannot completely tell, and it doesn’t really matter. When I read that Tom Ford was crafting a Private Blend that incorporated this sacred wood, I was stoked.
Of course the best laid fragrance plans on paper always seem to end up defying what the actual scent ends up being, but that didn’t stop me from blind-buying it during a Sephora sale. Thankfully when I finally tried it out in Boston a few days before my bottle arrived, it turned out to be everything I’d hoped it would be, and quite a bit more.
Rather than starting out with the Palo santo, ‘Ébène Fumé’ opens exactly like Ford’s exquisite ‘Santal Blush’ which is a sentimental favorite for holiday time, so at this point in the year it’s a welcome breath of refined air. The one minor thing that (barely) troubled me about ‘Blush’ was its relentless sweetness – which was fine for the holidays, but I tended to temper it with a bit of ‘Oud Wood’ to give it a darker aspect. Ford solves that gorgeously with ‘Ébène Fumé’, as behind that opening blast of sandalwood is a layer of incense and smoky resin which gives it some heat an hour or so into its trajectory. Shortly after that, the Palo santo comes into its glory in a most marvelous unfurling of wispy smoke – deep and rich yet somehow not overpowering. After years of volleying between too much and too little sillage – see the extremes of ‘Tuscan Leather’ versus ‘Neroli Portofino’ or ‘Japon Noir’ versus ‘Fucking Fabulous’ or ‘Vert D’Encens’ versus ‘Mandarino di Amalfi’ – Ford seems to have found the ideal meditative center of a lovely cologne, which feels finely fitting for the calming essence of Palo santo.
