Tom Ford Noir Pour Femme Review

Compared to the rather excellent Noir (marketed to men), one can’t help but feel the new pour femme flanker leaves Tom Ford’s female audience short-changed. 

Noir pour femme has nothing to do with the original, being instead a vanillic desert bomb. Lurking behind the thick fug of (ethyl-)vanillin and clean musks is an impression of leather perhaps hinting at saffron and if you sniff your skin after 10 hours and a shower, you’ll still be able to smell some very persistent woody odorants (Javanol etc.). Signed by Sonia Constant, Noir pour femme is, of course, well composed and does what it (presumably) sets out to do fine. But it’s a disappointingly cynical release all the same. 

Nose: Sonia Constant

House: Tom Ford

Release date: 2015

Notes (per Fragrantica): bergamot, bitter orange, mandarin, ginger, rose, jasmine, orange blossom, kulfi, vanilla, amber, sandalwood, mastic. 

Tom Ford Noir Review

Tom Ford’s Noir is a daring, tenebrous take on the bergamot-patchouli-opoponax structure so masterfully explored in the Guerlain classics Shalimar and Habit Rouge. 

It opens with a fresh, agrestic-citrus accord centred around bergamot that’s taken in an oily, green direction with violet leaf. Black pepper serves for spicy contrast and together with a civet note of unusual intensity, introduces the titular ‘noir’ theme. The similarities with J.-P. Guerlain’s masterpiece Habit Rouge become most apparent in the heart, where the herbal complex is softened with powdery orris and plenty of opoponax. In distinction however, the patchouli here is very much brought to the fore and encouraged to express its full range, from the camphorous through the earthy to the ambery. The latter facet, in combination with the opoponax, then links to a musky-vanillic Oriental base that retains a slight animalic vibe. 

Makes me wish I liked to wear patchouli more!

Nose: Olivier Guillotin

House: Tom Ford

Release date (2012)

Notes (per Fragrantica): bergamot, verbena, caraway, pink pepper, violet, black pepper, nutmeg, iris, geranium, rose, clary sage, opoponax, amber, patchouli, vetiver, civet, vanilla.