“What?” you might be asking. “Black Orchid. Umm, haven’t we covered this ground before?”
Well, yes, sort of. Robin reviewed Tom Ford Black Orchid Eau de Parfum soon after it was released in 2006, and we’ve since reviewed its flankers: Voile de Fleur and Velvet Orchid. But this review is for the newly launched Eau de Toilette, which the perfume house touts as different from the original…
More limited edition collector fragrance bottles, with the usual disclaimers: in most of these cases, the juice is unchanged, just the bottle is “special” (or not, as the case may be), and some of these may not be available in the US. Today’s post includes collector editions from Giorgio Armani, Givenchy, Issey Miyake and Sarah Jessica Parker; plus a new Eau de Toilette concentration of Tom Ford Black Orchid.
From Giorgio Armani, Sí “adorned with a couture golden bow” inspired by Armani’s runway designs. At Macy’s, $120 for 100 ml Eau de Parfum…
Every once in a while it’s nice to throw restraint to the wind. This is why molten chocolate desserts, lipstick like red patent leather, and Douglas Sirk movies exist. To me, Tom Ford Noir Pour Femme, with its over-the-top nutty sweetness, fits this category.
Noir Pour Femme’s notes include mandarin, bitter orange, ginger, rose absolute, jasmine accord, orange blossom, Indian kulfi accord, Madagascar vanilla, amber, Australian sandalwood, and lentisque resinoid. (Indian kulfi is a rich, dairy-based frozen dessert; lentisque is an evergreen shrub; and a resinoid is the extract of a shrub.) Perfumer Sonia Constant developed it…
Tom Ford Private Blend Venetian Bergamot1 was just released. (Does anyone know the connection between Venice and bergamot? Me neither.) A nice, but distracted — there was a Seattle Seahawks’ player standing next to me — sales assistant at my local Nordstrom made me a huge sample of Venetian Bergamot, and he let me know it was selling, selling, selling (sotto voce) “…as all Tom’s things do.”
Venetian Bergamot starts with dark bergamot seasoned with pepper, ginger and indistinct, cheap-smelling, “flowers”; the ginger is of the preserved, not fresh, variety. Venetian Bergamot then presents a so-so bergamot-ginger-light floral combo for about an hour on my skin. Then: things turn unexpectedly nasty…
Tom Ford will launch Venetian Bergamot, a new unisex fragrance in the Tom Ford Private Blend collection…