Ben Gorham is a memory maker – a kindred spirit of ours at The Accords. The Indian/Canadian Swede (you read right) doesn’t concoct scents for his brand Byredo by trend or tribe or even season, but by memory.
After giving his cousin away at her traditional Indian wedding, Flowerhead reimagines Gorham’s own fictional moment of matrimony. The scent captures a memory of the mind. And that memory fills his head with flowers.
Flowerhead’s floral crown is festooned with tuberose. The perfume bursts open with the luscious, dewy blossoms, at first cut through with alert acidic notes of lemon and lingonberry (that could easily read as apprehension, the tension of meeting an unknown mate in marriage). Surrender to those pillowy white flowers comes soon, but there’s no hint of schmaltz or syrup. Instead, Flowerhead slides into smooth, seductive suede at its base – which perhaps makes sense as Gorham has been tooling up a leather bag collection – but it’s combined with one of the most exotic notes in perfumery, the ancient note of ambergris, amber of the sea.
The marine, animalistic note takes Flowerhead to a place other white florals could never reach, the stuff of fantasies, dreams tinged with a touch of something sublime.
A memory, made.