Tom Ford Violet Blonde: For the tragically glamorous forest nymph in you.
I have very strong associations with violet flowers. Most distinctly and intimately, they were my grandmother’s favourite. She once told me a story about having friends over for tea in her youth in Croatia, and apologizing to the group that she didn’t have a matching set of cups. The next day a boy who’d been over sent her a box with a pretty tea set in it, and rather than be buffered by tissue to protect the china, it was filled completely with violet blossoms.
That’s hardly the only violet story out there – violets are a literary, historic, and mythological stronghold, always bein’ clutched in bunches by myriad woebegone heroines. Persephone was violet picking when Hades abducted her. They were Josephine Bonaparte’s favourite flower. As a motif, violets are perishable, delicate – earnestly lovely yet so fragile as to be tragic, crushed underfoot in Goethe’s poetry, tattered in that of H.D.
But violets are still considered a quintessential flower flower – right up there getting shout outs in the latter half of the old “roses are red” verse, identifiable even to the horticulture-ambivalent. Their scent accounts for their cultural longevity - something about it is insane. Fairies, opium and hysteria insane. The association violets suffer with powder and sugariness is a product of an artificial, chemical misinterpretation (like watermelon candy vs. the real juicy deal). Tom Ford’s Violet Blonde adroitly conveys the bewitching, nymph-ish character of violet by engaging the multi-dimensional qualities of the fragrance, rather than resorting to the candy-cliché that flavours a violet pastille (no diss to violet pastilles) (chic tic-tacs!).
First off, this scent isn’t unisex but nor is it particularly feminine; it has am ambiguity derived from a strong forest component, mainly the product of cedar notes. A base of mossy, green, wet chypre entwines a sweet heart of violet flower and jasmine, the effect of which is compelling and ozonic, like noticing blossoms in the dirt among lush, jade leaves. All flannel sheets and conifers after the rain.
The interesting dichotomy of Violet Blonde is that while it’s definitely a forest-sprite vibe, it’s just as much denizen of Old Hollywood hotels – retro and glamorous, as indeed it’s golden, vintage-looking bottle implies. Super-creamy, lightly carroty iris is responsible for the old-school, luxe, element here, and it plays together with violet perfectly, alighting on just the right amount of powderiness. If you’re nostalgic for the days of talcum wafts but can’t deal with the staleness of anything that comes on a pouf, this perfume will probably be your thing. Goes great with Lana Turner waves, especially if a couple twigs and leaves accidentally got caught in them.
I find the transcendental verdancy of Violet Blonde doesn’t last past an hour, but the lingering complexity of the scent remains, and ephemerality is a fitting price to pay for something I imagine is what the scene from Luhrmann’s Gatsby where Jay and Daisy reunite in a flower-filled 1920s forest cottage post-rainstorm smelt like. The coup of a celebrated scent discovering its own best incarnation after years of dismissal as a cloying candy flavor is formidable - Tom Ford pretty much hit violets out of the park.
Violet Blonde is for tragic, transient goddesses of forest and film.