Byredo's Baudelaire
It was four years ago in Liberty, the London department store that feels like a Tudor mansion-turnedposh bazaar, that I first smelled the fragrances from Byredo. It was the bottle design – and curiosity – that initially drew me in. Byredo, the salesperson explained, was a relatively new fragrance line from Sweden, a country that tends to be associated with minimalism, although these scents were rich and almost poetic.
Byredo is six years old now, but its 15 perfumes, including Mister Marvelous, La Tulipe, Rose Noir and its newest release, Seven Veils, have just arrived in Canada, where they are being carried by Holt Renfrew. What's more, the man behind them, 34-year-old Ben Gorham, is on his way to becoming an innovator in the fragrance world, establishing a reputation for developing scents built around enigmatic olfactory accords that are neither conventional nor commercial.
Gorham himself is something of an anomaly in the fragrance industry, one of the few remaining métiers that gets passed down through generations. He spent his formative years in Oakville, Ont., played college basketball and went to the Stockholm Art School. But shortly after he graduated, a chance encounter with the renowned French perfumer Pierre Wulff changed his course. He approached master noses Olivia Giacobetti and Jerome Epinette to help him develop a line and the result was Byredo (shorthand for "by redolence," as in "redolent of").
The fact that Byredo is carried in 24 countries and at such high-end locations as Barneys New York, Isetan, 10 Corso Como and now Holts (the only standalone store is in Stockholm) positions it as ambitiously niche – not so obscure as to be frustratingly unavailable but not so widespread that it loses its credibility as an insider's scent. "[Byredo]is a bit offbeat," Gorham explained when we spoke. "I defined my position as an outsider."
That said, the brand is growing: Gorham is currently adding a collection of leather accessories to its offerings. It's a natural progression, he maintained, given that gloves and perfumes were once sold side by side. "I also wanted to do visual reference because perfume is so abstract," he said, noting that a line of Byredo lipsticks will also be released this year.
I confessed to him that I bought Baudelaire, one of the earlier Byredo scents, a few months ago, not to wear but to spray on my pillow. Although the combination of juniper berry, black pepper, incense, leather, patchouli and black amber did not work on my skin, it was such an intoxicating scent that I liked the idea of keeping it close.
"I wanted it to be dark and have some retro references," he said of Baudelaire. "But at end of the day, it was about sex and death."
For an outsider fragrance, that smells about right.
Amy Verner