Tom Ford - Black Violet

I am a coward. I am sitting here and sniffing perfume from a paper strip. Aren´t the little lemon yellow pansies at the pic above cute? Pansies are cultivated flowers, kind of enlarged violets. Unfortunatly the scent of violet haven´t follow.


If the pansies above had a scent I would imagine they smell like the opening in Tom Ford´s Black Violet. Anyway, Black Violet haven´t a trace of anything black or dark in the top notes. No this is violet scent blended with fresh, light and but still spritzy lemon. And that is a very pleasant and interesting combo. Violet perfumes tends to be powdery, candied, or kind of violet green (due to violet leafs more than violet flower), but Black Violet isn´t any of it. It is radiant, lemon yellow like a sunbeam searching it´s way trough the trees a cold spring day.


Yes, I got really enchanted by the opening in Tom Ford´s Black Violet. It could be one of the best opening in a violet perfume I know of. If it wasn´t for what to come... uuuuuuhu... I really can´t understand the tought behind what´s come next. In the middle of the heartnotes and for the rest of the perfumes there comes something that has no connection what so ever with the rest of the perfume.


Imagine this, I have found a rare example of a yellow lemon little violet plant, it´s spring, the birds are singing and the sun is shining. The little violet plant smell so gorgeus and beautiful. Everything is just fine. But, suddenly the sun is covered by clouds, the birds doesn´t sing any more and the wood is at once dusky. Right out of nowhere a suffocating smell comes crawling, dry and damp at the same time, dusty and on the border to mouldy. Coloured in murky greygreenbrown... Moss is suffocating the little pretty violet plant, erases it and everything that was so beautiful with Black Violet.


Thank you, but no thanks. Why are they doing this? Why is it suddenly dark and gloomy? Or something... hideous? I can imagine a hundred different base notes that would suit better, than the one showing up.


Again, I can have some troubble with chypres, but this isn´t really a chypre, this is a swamp thing suffocating everything that stands in it´s way!


Actually, Tom Ford´s Black Violet has become a scrubber! It isn´t that often I have to scrub a perfume off, but I can´t stand this base note for longer than necessary. If the start of this perfume at least could have been dark and musky so I would have been warned.


Black Violet has a opening that make me smile, feeling comfy and happy, and so this!


I wonder if there is any other violet perfume with citrus notes? A perfume that become fresh, violy, citrusy, radiant and nice without the chypre base? Please let me know if you know of something like that.


When I am speaking about Tom Ford, Black Orchid doesn´t work on me either. I like it about half, but there are some notes in it disturbing me. Otherwise I haven´t tried anything from Mr Ford, what shouldn´t I miss?





Pic: Yellow pansies, ragerlaw