Black Orchid by Tom Ford

Today I am wearing Tom Ford’s Black Orchid.

I blow hot and cold with this one.  When I first experienced it, I didn’t like it so steered clear of it for a while.  But then a friend of mine bought it on a BA flight when we were going on holiday.  The first squirt she applied when we’d got to our destination was beautiful and I fell in love with it.

Today I sit at my desk with my wrists adorned with Black Orchid and I’m trying to analyse why there is this love/hate appeal.

It opens with chocolate and black truffle.  Slap, bang, thrust – it’s in your face and up your nose before you’ve had the chance to inhale.  It lingers, boy it lingers, enveloping you in a dark smoky cloud of jumbled aromas – they are all being thrown at me at once.  Patchouli, vetiver, spices, vanilla, gardenia, orchid, jasmine, lotus flower, ylang ylang, it is also reported that there are some citrus and other fruits in here, but to me the overwhelming odour is a sort of coffee, chocolate, muddy floral.

I think I like the idea of it, it’s daring and different.  I think I might like it in small doses and on someone else, I think the problem is when I wear it and it follows me everywhere, filling every nook and cranny of my olfactory senses until I want to shower and drench myself in bergamot, possibly the freshest, uplifting antidote to clear my nasal passages.

Have you tried it?  Are you a lover or a hater?