TOM FORD 12 Private Blend Scents

Like the laying out of the 12 first steps of an Inca pyramid made of black onyx, we now have been offered the 12 building blocks of the Tom Ford fragrance house. The 12 scents of the new line are called Amber Absolute, Noir de Noir, Velvet Gardenia, Black Violet, Tobacco Vanille, Oud Wood, Purple Patchouli, Bois Rouge, Moss Breches, Tuscan Leather, Neroli Portofino and Japan Noir.
The scents are described as perfumes constructed around a main note folded into secondary notes. In this manner and despite the richness of their textures the perfumes are not particularly complex. They offer dense, heavily textured sensations most of the time, but not necessarily deep and multi-layered in the longer term. The notes themselves have a certain depth - they are fleshy, often opulent -but the structures of the perfumes are rather straightforward. The 12 Private Blend scents come in black apothecary bottles that seem inspired by the 19th century antique Guerlain flacons (cf. the black flacon for Jicky). Tom Ford explained that he wanted to launch 12 fragrances at a time because of the urgency he felt in setting up his own perfume house. The standardization of the bottles will allow him to bring other building blocks to his fragrance house as needed.