Byredo
Ben Gorham’s nose is big business. By following it, he’s expanded his fragrance brand Byredo into a global empire.
“A lot of my work has fictional components, but it touches bigger notions like love, loss or death.”
“If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.”
Almost eight decades after Daphne du Maurier first published this idea in her novel Rebecca, Ben Gorham has managed to achieve just that. Armed with a notebook, the founder of Swedish fragrance brand Byredo jots down his experiences and feelings as they occur. Later, many of those scrawls end up as fragrances neatly stocked on shelves around the world—fleeting thoughts that he tries, quite literally, to bottle up.
Take his latest perfume, which looked to the bloody battlefields of World War One for inspiration. Based on a story passed on by his tatto...
