Last week, petruccijc asked me to do a review of this new Tom Ford and sent me a sample in the mail — so, here goes:
White Suede is, first of all, basically a musk scent, and like many musk scents, it is a skin scent. Most of you will know that means it settles into a low-level projection in the drydown phase. The style of recent fragrances (at least of many of them) is what people term, perhaps euphemistically, "light." This Tom Ford seems to match that description, but only after a fairly strong come-on.
The list for the pyramid (according to Fragrantica) is: rose, saffron, thyme, mate tea, olibanum, lily-of-the-valley, amber, suede and sandalwood. The saffron and yerba mate notes are definitely there for the modern sensibility; but Tom Ford is sensible enough to keep some 'oomph' in the juice with old standbys such as rose, incense, lily of the valley, amber, and sandalwood. These are particularly important in the drydown, where a kind of ambery-oriental effect is the last shimmer of the accords. The thyme is not evident to my nose, except perhaps very briefly in the initial blast.
The top note is the first burst of significant interest here, very fresh, with some evidence of suede, but fairly deeply buried under sharper elements until a bit later on. The next stage is a kind of buzzy synthetic musk that I've smelled before in other scents, but haven't learned to name precisely yet. I find the buzzy element in this annoying, but that's a matter of personal taste. Pretty soon it settles down into a much more powdery effect, which lasts for a bit, not unpleasantly. After a fairly brief bout of prominence for the title suede note, the scent retreats to the skin scent level, becoming much less prominent and abandoning a good deal of its opening sillage. The final stage of drydown recaptures some of the charm of the more traditional elements in the composition: the rose, amber, and sandalwood. The persistence of the rose into this last stage, together with a trace of glove leather or suede, is what gives the last moments of the fragrance their ultimate charm.
The French refer to that brilliant and conclusive response which you couldn't muster at the appropriate moment and which only occurs to you after you have left the room as "mots d'escalier" — literally, "words on the stairs" — on the way down, on the way out. The perfect eloquence grasped only too late is not quite an apt metaphor for White Suede; it does produce a rather brilliant moment before exiting, but just before. I found myself wishing the last word had come earlier and stayed longer.
I do like White Suede, especially after the initial foofaraw, well into the heart of smooth suede and the lovely, if elusive, drydown. I find the top notes a bit too much, too rushed, a little forced. I am sure, however, that this will have its admirers in another demographic, and I will be glad that it made them smile. For me? Perhaps, but not too close to the top of my list. I have more traditional tastes, I guess.
White Suede is, first of all, basically a musk scent, and like many musk scents, it is a skin scent. Most of you will know that means it settles into a low-level projection in the drydown phase. The style of recent fragrances (at least of many of them) is what people term, perhaps euphemistically, "light." This Tom Ford seems to match that description, but only after a fairly strong come-on.
The list for the pyramid (according to Fragrantica) is: rose, saffron, thyme, mate tea, olibanum, lily-of-the-valley, amber, suede and sandalwood. The saffron and yerba mate notes are definitely there for the modern sensibility; but Tom Ford is sensible enough to keep some 'oomph' in the juice with old standbys such as rose, incense, lily of the valley, amber, and sandalwood. These are particularly important in the drydown, where a kind of ambery-oriental effect is the last shimmer of the accords. The thyme is not evident to my nose, except perhaps very briefly in the initial blast.
The top note is the first burst of significant interest here, very fresh, with some evidence of suede, but fairly deeply buried under sharper elements until a bit later on. The next stage is a kind of buzzy synthetic musk that I've smelled before in other scents, but haven't learned to name precisely yet. I find the buzzy element in this annoying, but that's a matter of personal taste. Pretty soon it settles down into a much more powdery effect, which lasts for a bit, not unpleasantly. After a fairly brief bout of prominence for the title suede note, the scent retreats to the skin scent level, becoming much less prominent and abandoning a good deal of its opening sillage. The final stage of drydown recaptures some of the charm of the more traditional elements in the composition: the rose, amber, and sandalwood. The persistence of the rose into this last stage, together with a trace of glove leather or suede, is what gives the last moments of the fragrance their ultimate charm.
The French refer to that brilliant and conclusive response which you couldn't muster at the appropriate moment and which only occurs to you after you have left the room as "mots d'escalier" — literally, "words on the stairs" — on the way down, on the way out. The perfect eloquence grasped only too late is not quite an apt metaphor for White Suede; it does produce a rather brilliant moment before exiting, but just before. I found myself wishing the last word had come earlier and stayed longer.
I do like White Suede, especially after the initial foofaraw, well into the heart of smooth suede and the lovely, if elusive, drydown. I find the top notes a bit too much, too rushed, a little forced. I am sure, however, that this will have its admirers in another demographic, and I will be glad that it made them smile. For me? Perhaps, but not too close to the top of my list. I have more traditional tastes, I guess.
