01/05/2025
loewenherz
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Here is a new one from Tom Ford - in the grooved cylindrical bottle that is now used for the Signature Blends instead of the old one, which are priced somewhat more closely than the Private Blends - that breaks a little with Ford's established DNA or develops it further in a direction that is a little unexpected. As so often before, he makes use of a central accord - in this case balsamic woods - exaggerates it, turns up the volume, as it were, and builds a more or less iconic, one could also say 'broad-legged' fragrance around it. The former is certainly true of Bois Pacifique - although the interpretation of the woods is surprising, more on that in a moment - but it lacks any broad-leggedness and that American 'manspreading' that Ford aficionados (including me, despite all the grumbling in between) love so much about the label's fragrances.
Here's one that could just as easily have come from the pen of Dsquared² (hence the invented hashtag in the title, because that's what they often called their woody fragrances) - or Comme des Garçons'. Bois Pacifique is a synthetically conceived and produced woody fragrance of at most medium strength and persistence - a kind of halfling in Tom Ford's portfolio - which can be considered an epitome of everything that constitutes contemporary perfume: the simultaneous exaltation as well as synthesization of an accord (Akigalawood is not the extract of a wood, but an artificial fragrance note derived from patchouli oil), a product like an olfactory installation in a gallery of (post-)modern art - and unisex in the sense of non-binary aesthetics beyond traditional patterns of scent and thought: highly contemporary and as an academically consistent extract of the now not intended for a generation, but for a season or even two.
Conclusion: I realize that the same attributes I used in the previous sections - synthetic, zeitgeisty and comparatively less concise and persistent - could easily have been used to construct a spoiler. Why didn't I do that and why do I actually like this new Tom Ford, even - as a hypothetical idea - consider buying it? Is it just infatuation and nostalgic loyalty to the Ford label, is it really little more than new emperor's clothes? I quote Tolkien's Gandalf, who, when asked by the Elvish high priestess Galadriel: 'Why the halfling?', replies: 'I don't know. (...) Perhaps it is because I am afraid. And he gives me courage...'
Here's one that could just as easily have come from the pen of Dsquared² (hence the invented hashtag in the title, because that's what they often called their woody fragrances) - or Comme des Garçons'. Bois Pacifique is a synthetically conceived and produced woody fragrance of at most medium strength and persistence - a kind of halfling in Tom Ford's portfolio - which can be considered an epitome of everything that constitutes contemporary perfume: the simultaneous exaltation as well as synthesization of an accord (Akigalawood is not the extract of a wood, but an artificial fragrance note derived from patchouli oil), a product like an olfactory installation in a gallery of (post-)modern art - and unisex in the sense of non-binary aesthetics beyond traditional patterns of scent and thought: highly contemporary and as an academically consistent extract of the now not intended for a generation, but for a season or even two.
Conclusion: I realize that the same attributes I used in the previous sections - synthetic, zeitgeisty and comparatively less concise and persistent - could easily have been used to construct a spoiler. Why didn't I do that and why do I actually like this new Tom Ford, even - as a hypothetical idea - consider buying it? Is it just infatuation and nostalgic loyalty to the Ford label, is it really little more than new emperor's clothes? I quote Tolkien's Gandalf, who, when asked by the Elvish high priestess Galadriel: 'Why the halfling?', replies: 'I don't know. (...) Perhaps it is because I am afraid. And he gives me courage...'
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