“When I come home, I actually take off all my clothes, and I wear no clothes until I leave” Tom Ford once told an interviewer before insisting the remainder of the interview be completed in the buff, such is Mr Ford’s comfort with nudity. Surely then, it was hot-skinned nudity that inspired Santal Blush for the Tom Ford Private Blend collection in 2011.
A your-skin-but-better scent with undeniable allure, Santal Blush is perfumery taken to its sensuous extreme, a sort of olfactory encapsulation of Tom Ford’s penchant for overt and glamourised sexuality. Mr Ford himself described Santal Blush as a perfume of “soft, naked glamour with a mysterious spirit”, and it is exactly that – a commingling of exotically humid spices, sumptuous woods, and enticing florals – but, it is that and so very much more because Santal Blush is also a triumph of modern perfume skill and artistry.
Santal Blush is a sandalwood fragrance not in the style of most green-spiced, vaguely creamy contemporary sandalwood scents, but rather a multi-dimension evocation of the splendour of the hallowed Mysore variety. The Indian Mysore sandalwood tree, once harvested to near extinction for its essential oil – smelling simultaneously floral, delicately spiced, decadently creamy and carnal – is sandalwood par excellence, but its scarcity and price have seen it all but disappear from use in modern perfumery. Tasked then with creating a new Private Blend and knowing that only Mysore sandalwood could deliver the gentle sensuality Mr Ford’s brief surely called for, perfumer Yann Vasnier rose to the challenge of replicating the weighty creamy, floral facets of genuine Mysore sandalwood without actually employing the endangered variety. The result, Santal Blush, in my opinion the very best replication of Mysore sandalwood on the market.
Tom Ford offers us this in the way of an official notes list:
sandalwood, cinnamon, cumin, fenugreek, carrot seed, jasmine, rose, ylang-ylang, benzoin, Agarbois, musk
Assuming Agarbois, obviously a propriety material, is the leather-cedar-nuanced woody note I detect in the base of Santal Blush, Tom Ford’s official notes list is one of those rare few that I find to be true to my experience of the fragrance on skin.
A volley of floral and spice notes upon first application, Santal Blush’s opening accord is one of peculiar beauty. Soft, sweet ylang-ylang and rose contrast the robust piquancy of masala spices as carrot seed, here vegetal, waxy and cool-to-the-touch, lend an aldehydic feel almost reminiscent of a Chanel fragrance. Quickly though, cumin skews the balance of the opening in favour of the spices as the composition becomes gradually fleshier, more skin like, before the tight curls of cinnamon bark unfurl to soften the opening with their radiant, powdery warmth. All this hot-skinned piquancy though is nothing but mere embellishment to Santal Blush’s sandalwood accord; a masterful blend of what seems to be Santalum album (Indian sandalwood, though not Mysore cultivated) and the greener, spicier Australian variety, Santalum spicatum, imbued with balsams for depth and character. In tandem with the composition’s complementary notes of jasmine, benzoin and musk, this sandalwood accord mirrors the enchantingly nuanced complexity of Mysore sandalwood to provide Santal Blush its heart, equally as subtle as it is wantonly carnal.
Later in the drydown, reinforced by the addition of cedar, the sandalwood treads a darker path with the introduction of leathery, very nearly animalic oud nuances – presumably the result of that Agarbois note – to the still persistent masala spice accord of cumin, fenugreek and cinnamon. Ever mirroring its Mysore muse though, Santal Blush envelops the rough edges of these cedar and raw leather nuances in white musk to soften their presence, replicating as it does the darkened creaminess inherent in genuine Mysore sandalwood, all the while contrasting it against the floral-benzoin plushness of the opening and heart.
In its blush-hued glory, I find Santal Blush exquisitely beautiful. Mr Ford may well have found inspiration in nudity and sexuality, but his own comfort and ease with the explicit has translated into a fragrance that is as comforting as it is sensuous. Of equal note, Vasnier’s multi-dimensional fusion of exotic eastern spices, intoxicating florals and sumptuous woods has produced a meticulous replication of Mysore sandalwood – a feat few other perfumers have achieved, and arguably, none so well. Spectacular.
Year of Release: 2011
Creative Direction: Tom Ford
Perfumer: Yann Vasnier
Alternatives: CHANEL Bois des Îles, Diptyque Tam Dao
Available: David Jones and www.tomford.com from $340, 50ml.