FOR THE LAUNCH OF HIS PERFUME, BLACK ORCHID, THE IRREPROACHABLE MR. FORD LEADS CHANDLER BURR ON A SCENT ODYSSEY OF HIS FRAGRANCE INSPIRATIONS. AS ONE EXPECTS, SEX AND GLAMOUR GO RIGHT UP THE NOSE

I arrive at The Carlyle at five forty-two p.m., and Whitney comes down to reception. I was told to expect her. She’s Tom’s right hand, and she escorts me to Room 411, which is not his room—his room is upstairs somewhere; he’s registered under another name. It’s the room Tom Ford Beauty has taken so he and I can smell the things.

Whitney orders drinks and settles me smoothly before the perfumes. Roughly a dozen. I look them over. So this is Tom’s scent memory bank. “The classics he loves,” Whitney says. Very interesting. (To the left of the sofa, by itself, is a glossy black box, closed. I don’t touch it.) At exactly six p.m. Tom comes in, French cuffs, one button buttoned on a dark suit coat. He’s grinning. We shake hands.

“I love rich fragrances that by today’s standards are perhaps considered overpowering. There was a stripping down of everything in the ’90s; juices became transparent. L’Eau d’Issey. Trying to smell like water?” He shakes his head. “We lost the story.” He says, “I put on fragrance before I go to bed, not that there’s anyone in my bed who cares what I smell like—Richard doesn’t give a shit—but it makes me feel comfortable.”

I glance at a glossy black box. He follows my eyes, says, “No one can say, ‘I’m going to create an iconic fragrance that will live for fifty years.’” But everyone aims at it. “Oh, sure. Everyone. I wanted to do that. This is the first from what I hope will be a great fragrance house. When I think of Saint Laurent, I think of Opium.”

So. Which scent to smell first? “This.” He reaches for a bottle, I hand him two paper smelling strips, and he sprays and we hold them under our noses, half looking at each other, half blindly breathing in the scent. “The first scent memory I have is Youth Dew [Estée Lauder] because my grandmother wore it. I was very close to her. Everything about her was Texas, bigger, flashier. In Austin I grew up partially in her house, which I bought in 1996, and I swear to God you could still smell this perfume.” Youth Dew is insanely rich, dark, animalistic, powerful. You, uh, think it’s still wearable? “I do think it’s wearable. I know a lot of young girls who wear [Guerlain’s] Shalimar and Mitsouko, and I think there’s a return to authenticity—a reaction to all this minimalism. We want ornament, luxe, tassels, but we have to find a way not just to regurgitate it. You have to put your stamp on it.” Chandler Burr

TO READ THE FULL STORY, CHECK OUT V45,
ON NEWSSTANDS EVERYWHERE JANUARY 15, 2007

Photography Robin Broadbent