Even before you spritz and inhale, the name alone connotes a specific atmosphere. After all, if you’re dealing with a fragrance named for one of the masters of homoerotica, an artist renowned for his salacious depictions of sailors, soldiers, bikers, and lumberjacks, then you expect to be lured into the depths of subconscious desires.
Tom of Finland doesn’t disappoint. One inhale and it’s fascinating to feel yourself wandering beneath a darkened portal in your latex and rubber. There’s Ultravox on the sound system and bourbon and beers on the bar. You reach for a cigarette.
(Source: Tom of Finland Foundation)
This sensuous elixir comes from Etat Libre d’Orange, the fragrance house that created fragrances based on Tilda Swinton and Rossy de Palma and now Justin Vivian Bond. The same house whose stated principle in creating fragrance is “Le parfum est mort, Vive le parfum” and whose René Magritte sensibility is to shock the senses in order to incite pleasure.
(Source: Etat Libre d’Orange)
As sexy as leather and yet as soft as suede, Tom of Finland (created by perfumer Anotine Lie) has a heart full of the great outdoors, with notes of cypress, birch, and iris. Created for the Tom of Finland Foundation by perfumer Antoine Lie (the nose behind the Daphne Guinness fragrance for Comme des Garcons, as well as Gucci Rush for Men, and scores of others), the fragrance represents, in Lie’s words, his desire “to blend absolute purity with outright sensuality” as a way of “paying homage” to gay society.
Not only an homage to the iconic males of Tom, but also a hearty handshake to the master’s native Finland in the mix of pine and vetiver in the drydown, Tom of Finland salutes the joys of two uniforms shed along the banks of cool, fresh water.
