For the latest scent from Stockholm-based fragrance house Byredo, Creative Director Ben Gorham has drawn inspiration from his cultural heritage with a fragrance inspired by his own imagined Indian wedding ceremony.
Flowers traditionally play a major symbolic role in Indian weddings, where flower heads are strung together on giant leis, which are exchanged between bride and groom as a token of respect. At the heart of Flowerhead is wild jasmine sambac, a fresh white floral scent, combined with a 'snapped-stem' green accord, sensual dewy tuberose and rose petals for luck. These floral mid-notes are offset by three piquant top-notes: Sicilian lemon, angelica seeds and lingonberry.
“A lot of the work I've done in the past started off with specific references – personal memories and things associated with my background and upbringing. As I became more experienced in the craft of making a perfume the dialogue with the perfumer evolved into a common language and I was able to venture outside of these specific references and to develop a fiction,” Gorham told Cosmetics Business. A few years ago I developed an interest in my heritage, which is part Indian (my mother is from India) and this project was sparked five or six years ago when I gave away my cousin at her Indian wedding, which was my first traditional Indian wedding. This fragrance was about capturing that idea of an Indian bride, rather than just the wedding and I called it Flowerhead, because it was really the fictional memory that I can imagine from my own Indian wedding. The idea of marrying someone you don't know was very interesting. There's anxiety and excitement. And I described this person as a 'flowerhead', because the bride is completely covered in floral hair arrangements.”
Flowerhead costs £88 for 50ml and £130 for 100ml.