First Dibs: Tom Ford Violet Blonde, Eau de Parfum

Ribbed glass and (ribbed, riveted and debossed) gold accents illuminated by honied cognac: Violet Blonde’s aesthetic may spell seventies revival, but Tom Ford’s scent inspirations hail from an earlier age. At first sniff, some notes seem to round off prematurely, but sink into this scent and one finds it wears sensuously. A medley of woods, among them Benzoin, Cedarwood, and Haitian Vetiver, provide an unobtrusive base for the fragrance’s dominant notes: Violet and Orris. The combination is a smart one. Violet’s exuberance, while enchanting, can become cloying and even shrilly naive when given too free a reign. Sophisticated Orris disciplines Violet without restricting it: the result is an old-school elegance that is also beguilingly dynamic, a coming-of-age story played out in fragrant notes.

This First Dibs item was selected by Interview market assistant Alexa Lanza.