Thom Browne has released a range of fragrances for the first time in the history of the fashion house. The scents are a collaborative creation between Browne, and legendary nose and Swiss fragrance maker Givaudan. The line of crisp, clean perfumes is skewered by a smokey vetiver. The packaging strongly reflects the Browne sartorial look; tailored, clean, timeless and, meticulously precise. Browne, who is famous for his neatly-cut dove grey tailoring, has been busy crafting the fragrances for the past two years and insists it was “time to add a fragrance to the world of Thom Browne. They will honestly complement the collections.”
Browne’s approach to scent-creation closely mirrored his creative approach to designing the collections, and the result is “pure and authentic”, a natural progression for the brand. For Browne, the hero note was the starting point. “I started with the pure idea of vetyver,” he explains, “and surrounded that by scents that were attractive to different types of people for different times of the day”. Browne attributes the purity of the juices to having worked with the “best nose in the world” ensuring the ingredients selected were the richest possible.
“Beauty to me means confidence,” Browne tells me. The resounding aim for the fragrances to suit anyone, to be attractive and available to anyone who so wishes to wear it regardless of gender or sexuality, has been a success and it’s a philosophy that’s mirrored in Campbell’s film and campaign imagery for which Reuben Selby took on the role of creative director. Two people, similar in appearance, who appear completely distinctive on a second glance appear half-dressed in Browne’s cult tailoring. The pair are entwined in a dislocated embraced, at once a union and also a disengagement. “The fragrances should be very personal,” Browne says, despite the tabula rasa aesthetic, “just like they are personal to me. I gravitate towards the pure vetyver.” For Browne, the personal is evidently everything. His greatest inspiration? “Andrew [Bolton]” his partner, and his greatest role model? “Both my mother and father”. He doesn’t miss a beat.
