Tom Ford has been teasing his latest Private Blend release – the intriguingly-titled ‘Tobacco Chocolat’, which holds a bit more promise than the coffee-accented foray of ‘Cafe Rose’ from a number of years ago. I wasn’t a fan of that coffee slant, but chocolate seems a bit more palatable, particularly given the way it might mingle with the tobacco. Hey, if it worked for vanilla with ‘Tobacco Vanille’ who’s to say it won’t be equally charming with a chocolate note? Titles and names only go so far in the Tom Ford world, however, so I’m reserving serious judgment and comment until I can actually try this one on. Hopefully that will happen soon, and hopefully the confection isn’t too sweet, as tobacco can often carry an intrinsic sweetness that, in my preferences, does better with something drier, as employed in ‘Tobacco Oud‘. Only time, and nose, will tell…
The original ‘Noir de Noir’ as included in Tom Ford’s original run of Private Blends didn’t initially speak to me. In that silence, however, was a promise to revisit its profile at a time in the future. At such moments, a promise is enough – when we’re not quite ready for something but we sense one day we might be. A similar shifting in taste and appreciation happened with ‘Carnal Flower’, and now that several more years have passed, I’m coming around to Ford’s ‘Noir Extreme’ thanks to a sampler that Betsy gifted me last year, and a full bottle that Andy gave me for this recent birthday.
The fragrance itself is a flanker of Ford’s mainstream ‘Noir’ offering – and while it’s listed as an Eau de Parfum, its staying power is more of a cologne, which makes it ideal for this late summer September moment, when the heat can still be quite on, and the days too much for an insistent parfum. It strikes the ideal balance at this time of the year.
Opening with a green citrus and spice kick, it quickly calms down to reveal a powdery amber second tier with some vanilla and wood. Aspects of cardamom, nutmeg and saffron lend it a hint of gourmand richness, while some minor white floral notes sound like the faint tinkling of bells in the distance. It seduces softly with some sandalwood completing its design, enveloping with a cloud of delicate beauty, something I appreciate even if it falls slightly short of a seriously potent Eau de parfum. As I mentioned, this isn’t the time of the year for that – not yet – and so this works perfectly. Timing can be everything when it comes to fragrance, and as we prepare to close out this Solid Gold summer, this fragrance gorgeously straddles the sun and the cooler nights, when darkness indicates mystery, and Noir whispers sweet secrets so quietly it might just be the wind.
A modern spin on the 70’s vibe that our Solid Gold Summer has previously embodied, this is the Tensnake Remix of Duo Lipa’s infectious ‘Hallucinate’, which brings that gloriously tacky decade into the modern musical landscape, melding summers past, present, and future as we look to the next stage of our SG Summer. Are you ready to funk the fuck out? Let the baseline shake you…
Body make you silly, make you do what I want Oh, baby, I can make it pretty, I could string you along But I’mma love you like a fool Breathe you in ’til I hallucinate
I hallucinate when you call my name Got stars in my eyes and they don’t fade when you come my way I’m losing my m-m-m-mind, m-m-m-mind M-m-m-mind, m-m-m-mind I hallucinate when you call my name Got stars in my-
Losing oneself in the pool, in the music, in the perfume – summer causes hallucinations, a suspended state of hazy unreality, some trickery of water and light and shadow and brilliance, some spell cast by fragrance and sound and sensual effect. It’s dangerously easy to get lost just below the surface, to lose one’s mental footing, so to speak, similar to the way sharks enter tonic immobility when turned upside down. A state of peaceful paralysis that is like the call of a killer siren. You want to release and let yourself go because it feels so good, even as part of you knows there is danger ahead, and probably not that much farther ahead. Still, you keep swimming into the pleasure, into the peace, into the summer decadence. ‘Tis the damn season.
Wanna be right where you are Let’s go dancing in the dark Don’t wait, you can push to start Lose control
Kill me slowly with your kiss Wrap me ’round your fingertips Damn, I need another hit Make me lose my mind
Since I was not looking for anything specific, I kept my mind open to whatever the universe might throw in my path. That happened to be the gorgeous House of Guerlain, which I had previously sampled in the amazing Guerlain fragrance bar at Raffles. On this day, I was drawn to the golden honeycomb bottle of their Aqua Allegoria Forte line, and the one that spoke to me in cool whispers of refreshing brightness was this ‘Oud Yuzu Forte’.
Oud and Yuzu are separately two of my favorite fragrance profiles, yet for some reason I’ve never happened upon them in a combination that worked as well as this one. The woody aspects of oud ground the tangy effervescence of the yuzu. Citrus was made for summer, and while most citrus scents are gone within minutes, this one, being an Eau de parfum, lasts a decent deal longer. Carrying a golden sparkle, this scent strikes the perfect chord for a Solid Gold Summer, offering something a little deeper, a little more striking.
Notoriously difficult to translate to a wearable perfume, the fragrance of a lilac is not one that likes to be captured with ease or success. It is probably best experienced in person, for the fleeting time they are in bloom at the magnificent mid-point of spring. For those who don’t live in a climate suitable for lilacs, or for anyone who wants more of their precious perfume at other times of the year, there is a decent-enough approximation in the ‘French Lilac’ perfume by Pacifica.
Personally, this will only be used in times of extreme desperation – when the lilac harvest isn’t a good one, or when winter weather stalls and spring hesitates to warm up. It will do in a pinch, when one needs a little nudge toward nostalgia.
Rainy mornings with sprays of lilac drooping over the neighbor’s fence…
Just as I was mulling over which Louis Vuitton fragrance to request for a possible wedding anniversary gift (the heart is currently drawn to ‘Meteore’), Tom Ford’s company releases something that speaks to so many of my comfort and crave zones. See and sniff the sun-kissed brilliance of their latest release ‘Taormina Orange’.
A natural offshoot of their summery Portofino line, this one sounds like it has all the makings of a happy summer dream. A few of my favorite Ford fragrances are in this freshie vein – the original ‘Neroli Portofino‘, the exquisite ‘Mandarino di Amalfi‘, the spicy ‘Costa Azzurra‘, and the emotionally-weighty ‘Azure Lime‘ come to mind.
While my preference is for more potent bottles when it comes to the Tom Ford price point, I forgive a lot once the calendar turns to summer, and no one wants a clingy, cloying perfume to stick to the skin during the sweaty season anyway.
With its blood orange center and promised bitterness to take the sweet seas, the note palette here touches on some of my favorites – from cardamom and orange flower to earthy oak moss. As with most fragrances, just because all the listed notes align with scents I love, that doesn’t mean that they will make beautiful music together; this one could sway cloyingly wayward, or the blood orange might veer off the path of pleasant – all of which means I’ll be sampling this before requesting or purchasing it myself. We don’t have the financial fortitude to blind-buy anything these days.
That said, I’ll be clearing space on the Tom Ford shelf of the cologne cabinet just in case.
Ever since Tom Ford stepped away from his eponymous brand, allowing Estée Lauder to temper the potency of his Private Blend releases, I’ve had to look elsewhere for the more challenging scents that can stand up to a harsh New York winter. Enter my favorite Spice Girl – Posh – also known as Victoria Beckham – and her line of fragrances. There are four of them, and the sampler set I received for Christmas has opened up a whole new world of desires, starting with ‘Suite 302’ which was a gift to myself. Sometimes, as on a dreary winter day to this already-dismally-insane year of 2026, you need to treat yourself.
‘Suite 302’ brings that smoky cherry vibe to delicious life, with a gloriously-dark tobacco and leather heart tempered by a sweet, but not overly cloying, sweetness and fruitiness that is precisely my current winter mood – nicely balanced with enough heat to cut through these cold and dry winter days. A bit of richness for the stark and austere season – and a beautiful accent piece to punctuate the frigid moment at hand.
Madonna’s love affair with Dolce & Gabbana goes back decades, and finds further expression in her lending them a song for their promotional push for ‘The One’ fragrances. It’s her first musical release since 2019’s ‘Madame X’, and acts as an amuse-bouche for her upcoming return to dance-floor form in a long-hinted-at sequel to ‘Confessions On A Dancefloor‘.
A respectable cover of Patty Pravo’s ‘La Bombola’, sung in its original Italian, this Madonna is moody, mature, and understandably a little worn and worse for wear. At moments, it doesn’t even really sound like her, which is a bold move, as she’s not the chirpy girl of ‘Like A Virgin‘ or ‘Material Girl‘ anymore, and this is an accomplished effort. It’s not going to climb the charts, as if that even mattered at this point in her career, and it really speaks more to her commitment to creatively expansive artistry, and a wonderful evocative companion to her perfume ad visuals.
I wish she’d done something like this for her own fragrance releases for ‘Truth or Dare’ and ‘Truth or Dare: Naked’ – both of which are exquisite scents, and worth more than Madonna’s relatively lackluster promotional push at the time. A song by the lady herself would have possibly made these flagons immortal in the style of Elizabeth Taylor rather than a one-two-off adored by a selective niche.
That said, perhaps I should be glad not more have embraced these, as they can still be found if you know where to look. Like the music here, the mood is sensual, spicy, slightly carnal. If anyone knows how to whet the appetite for what is about to come, it’s Madonna. This is a gorgeous start to a year that may find her deservedly back in the pop spotlight.
Making what will likely be his final appearance here to close out the Autumn of Oud, he rather ironically wears an Amouage fragrance titled ‘Overture’ (and little else) in the promise of a beginning and an ending at once – the very essence of incongruous impossibility. Such has been the conundrum that is the existence of Mr. Oud. For those seeking resolution or revelation of who Mr. Oud really is, this post will not go very much further in illuminating that. If anything, he departs leaving more questions, more mysteries, than we had before his arrival.
Mr. Oud artfully ingratiates himself into your world, making you think of him in a way he will never think of you – his exquisitely-fragranced coat and scarf floating in the air as more of a ghostly apparition than any physical embodiment of personhood.
He is Scrooge and Santa and little baby Jesus as much as he is not, balancing precariously between worlds, straddling the dangerous space where the precious clashes with the permissible, and what you want to see diabolically overrides what you actually see.
Mr. Oud has only ever been who you want him to be – a mirror and crystal ball that invites the indulgent luxury of getting to put him in whatever box you’d like. Like smoke and perfume, he can find his way through he smallest openings – transporting himself invisibly, riding on the wind and infiltrating the mind because he was never quite real. Mr. Oud was an idea and a ghost, and once his purpose was served, it was like he was never there.
But what purpose was that? What role did he actually inhabit in your world? What does anyone really mean to anyone else?
Maybe he was just fashion and movement, pose and provocation, fuckery and trickery for a fall of dreams that went unfulfilled. Maybe he was the tragedy you could enjoy, brush up against, and thrill at from a distance. Maybe you made him do your dirty work, and maybe you were just a little envious that he got away with it. Maybe you were mad because he dared, and maybe you were glad.
The many maybes of Mr. Oud hang there in the air like filigrees of incense, curing elegantly into a darkened sky of almost-winter, studded with the sparkling promise of starlight from the past – the ultimate illustration of the multitudes that that the universe contains.
And so he ends his brief time with us on the note of Amouage’s ‘Overture’ – his ironic little wink of a name, coupled with a potent and polarizing fragrance, to be appreciated only by those with the most exquisitely refined taste – and abysmally irritating for those who like their scents sweet and safe. This one reads dangerously mythic, with notes redolent of the dark season – myrrh, frankincense and sandalwood – along with a hefty collection of spices like cumin, cardamom, cinnamon and saffron to keep things in the gourmand camp. It is most definitely and deliciously not for for everyone – just like Mr. Oud himself.
Sandalwood has always been my go-to note for the holidays, and ‘Bois Pacifique’ provides that, along with added layers of spice perfectly aligned to add a festive note to the proceedings. There is cardamom and turmeric, blending in beautifully with the forest elements of cedar and oakwood. Olibanum and orris butter round out the journey, and the sandalwood weaves its creamy way through the heart of it all, making for a divine holiday fragrance.
Cynthia Erivo reportedly wore a trio of fragrances while filming the ‘Wicked’ movies, and in honor of the imminent return of the witches, I’ve been concocting my own version of this for when Andy and I attend an advance screening next week.
That left ‘Witchy Woo’, which sounded much more intriguing. I was looking for another spooky fragrance to deploy at this time of the year, something to give ‘Myrrhe Mystere’ a companion for haunting the cooler nights. November can be tricky for fragrances, and I tend to rely heavily on ‘Bois Marocain‘ and ‘Japon Noir‘ but they can’t be expected to pick up all the slack. Enter ‘Witchy Woo’, which arrived a few days ago and immediately stands on its own as a fittingly bewitching scent.
Moroccan orris and rose absolute dance with cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper, and patchouli – while elements of frankincense lend the heart a smoky resinous power. ‘Witchy Woo’ is a wicked fragrance on its own – when layered with ‘Promise’ it turns positively diabolical. (The Le Labo ‘Lys 41’ isn’t missed at all.)
Combining fragrances is new and slightly uncomfortable territory for me. I’m not usually a fan of layering or experimenting with multiple scents. While all the perfume counter ‘experts’ will extol the virtues of it, they’l say anything to sell another bottle. I’ve always trusted the perfumers themselves to put a scent profile together that needs no supplement or counterpoint.
That said, perhaps my purist’s viewpoint is too rigid for my own good – when I think of the possibilities that this potentially opens up, it may actually work against those craven perfume counter charlatans, allowing me to create a multitude of new fragrance options without needing to purchase new bottles. A whole new world of olfactory witchcraft just revealed itself, and I’m only beginning to flex these powers.
The spooky season calls for something smoky and incense-like, and while our fall oud theme is befitting, this offering from Tom Ford’s Private Blends is an underrated gem for that sort of vibe. Originally I got a small bottle of this because I was only going to use it for a Stevie Nicks concert, but it has become a fall favorite in its own right for its pungent feel and seasonal magic.
The notes of myrrhe, vanilla, sandalwood and musk, tempered by some leather and jasmine, make it sound like a sweeter concoction than it is ~ I find it magnificently darker than how that reads on paper. There’s something resinous and smoky at work, and it carries a deeper patina than ‘Ebene Fume’, to which it has been favorably compared. (I’m a big ‘Ebene Fume‘ fan so any similarity would be celebrated.)
This almost approaches the vaunted holiness of ‘Amber Absolute’ territory, but stops sadly short of that original’s hallowed performance ground. Still, to even approach such a grand vision is a feat in itself, and ‘Myrrhe Mystere’ is a lovely scent for keeping warm and cozy on these darkening days.
It’s been no secret that the majority of recent Tom Ford fragrance releases have not thrilled my nose. The potent and sometimes-polarizing boldness of the original Private Blend collection had given way to more commercial and mainstream offerings – nothing terribly offensive, but nothing terribly brave. That changes with the arrival of the latest in the Oud line – ‘Oud Voyager’ – which is a stunning addition to the collection (and a 50th birthday gift to myself the last time I was in Boston).
It’s a banger from the beginning, even if the oud isn’t the extreme pungent blast that some fragrance fanciers favor – it’s more of a softer, benign take on it, which is perfect for the fall season. We want to ease into this, yes, with some fanfare and excitement, but elegant restraint as well. The push and pull of life – the extremes of fall – the enchantment of oud…
Enter ‘Pacific Chill’ by Louis Vuitton. Perfectly aligned with this year’s Island theme, ‘Pacific Chill’ is a fruity and fizzy fresh scent, with a playful staying aspect. For me, it rings mostly of apricot and orange, after an effervescent opening of citrus, mint and black currant. The fruitiness runs throughout, as the base reveals aspects of fig and dates, fueled by Ambrette.
‘Pacific Chill’ is often listed with ‘Imagination’ as one of Louis Vuitton’s most popular and celebrated fresh fragrances, and deservedly so, even if the performance slightly pales in comparison. For me, ‘Pacific Chill’ gets a good five to six hours of staying power, and it does so in a tricky way. On the skin, it slips away after a couple of hours, depending on how much you have applied – on clothing, it stays a bit longer. When the air is moving, it tends to act more ephemerally – sitting in a car with the AC blasting, I thought it had gone entirely, but it came back an hour later. I like that sort of playfulness in a fragrance, especially in the summer. Liberal spraying gets me through most of the day, but that may not be enough for some considering the price point, and I can’t argue with that. For me, the apricot, mint and orange sparkle of this is worthy enough of a second application half-way through the day.
Oh sweet Linden tree, how you so deceptively hide your green flowers among your foliage, emitting your delicious perfume in disguise while we all seek out what exotic and colorful bloom is the cause of such sweetness in the air! For many years, I half-heartedly sought out a linden tree fragrance, as cloying as it could sometimes be when a grove of them scented the warm air, but I never came across anything worthy of note until a recent weekend in NY.
After perusing the Creed line for a summer fragrance at Bergdorf Goodman (and getting nowhere) the perfume rep off-handedly pulled a bottle of Tilia by Marc-Antoine Barrois. Before smelling it, I wondered if it was related to the scientific name for the Linden tree of these parts (Tilia cordata or Tilia americana) and once the rep sprayed a little on a sample card, the scent of summer immediately filled the air. The universe sometimes has a way of rewarding those who are patient, and often when it’s least expected.
This is not entirely a natural linden fragrance – it carries a few synthetic aspects that may not fool some people into thinking it’s the real thing, but it’s certainly close enough, and has enough charm to kindle the elusive aura of almost-summer. A most tender perfume for this most tender time.
Layers of honeyed florals – linden, heliotrope, jasmine and broom ñ somehow don’t combine into something atrociously cloying, though this is a sweet floral, fit mostly for those who love the linden. It also tends to go quiet rather quickly, shyly retreating after its initial burst of summery sweetness – which is part of early summer’s charm, and welcome when the height of mid-day heat would render it a burden.
Still, there is a sparkling richness to this perfume, a creamy confection that shimmers in the summer sun, and shines in the summer rain.
