BEN GORHAM OF BYREDO PARFUMS

Ben Gorham founded his Stockholm-based Byredo fragrance company in 2006. Working with renowned perfumers Olivia Giacobetti and Jerome Epinette, he has developed one of the industry’s most talked-about new brands. Deborah Fulsang spoke to him recently about fragrance and family, painting and perfumers, on the occasion of his launching the latest Byredo scent, Black Saffron, at Holt Renfrew in Toronto.

Q: Your fragrances are beautiful, and your story’s amazing—to go up against the big guns and start from scratch. Tell us a little bit about what that’s like.

GORHAM: It really started as a creative project for me. I was quite naïve in terms of the business development part. It wasn’t until I had become obsessed with these fragrances that I realized I had to build a business around it. Even at that point, I wasn’t too focused on competitors, I just really believed that focusing on product would get me somewhere. I must say, that it’s really exceeded my expectations in terms of our global success.

Q: In the beginning did you strategize to make this a global brand?

GORHAM: I never really felt limited in terms of the market and the culture—maybe I was naïve to a certain point—but I’ve grown up in a bunch of places and always travelled, so I was quite global in my approach. I remember not being limited.

Q: Your mother is of Indian descent, your father Canadian, but have you lived most of your life based in Stockholm?

GORHAM: I spent almost 15, 16 years in Canada, and then I moved to New York and then really just flipped between Europe and North America.

Q: And where were you in Canada?

GORHAM: Toronto. More specifically, I was in Oakville. Where I started my high school. I finished my high school in New York, actually. Then I came back to Canada for college. Or university, as it’s called.

Q: I wanted to ask a little bit about Black Saffron, your new scent. Your press materials talk about saffron as one of the costliest ingredients. Can you give an idea of what that amounts to?

GORHAM: I don’t know what saffron is in terms of kilo price, but I know that there are a number of natural raw materials, like absolute rose, that are actually more per kilo than gold. In terms of our price point, I focus on the ingredients as opposed to marketing and advertising. It [is] really a luxury to be able to work with the highest level of raw materials. Not to say that it’s always necessary in terms of creativity, but it’s definitely a luxury.

Q: The appreciation of quality and luxury—that has to come from somewhere.

GORHAM: My mother has always been about that, and I grew up with my mother and my sisters. I think that’s always been a part of my vocabulary. Growing up, whether it was food or fabric, that was my mother’s approach. It’s always been a huge aspirational part for Byredo. I grew up in a very simple life—my mother worked two jobs at a time and brought up two kids by herself. I think a lot of the idea around quality—I don’t really like the word luxury—but working with the highest quality, those are kind of the things that I always wanted and wasn’t able to have. I think I’m kind of acting that out with Byredo.

Q: Tell me about the meeting of this perfumer, and switching from the medium of painting to perfume?

GORHAM: I began taking an interest in painting coming out of art school. And I think meeting [perfumer] Pierre [Wulff] and the introduction to fragrance and smell, which I called it at the time, was very abstract in contrast to what I’d been working on which was very visual, very aesthetic. I think initially I was quite fascinated by the fact that this medium could evoke as much, if not more, instinct and emotions in relation to memory, but in such an abstract way. I think that’s kind of what set it apart and what fascinated me in the beginning and allowed me to get involved.

Q: What are your most profound scent memories from growing up?

GORHAM: After meeting the perfumer for the first time, I went back to India and had this incredible experience, which is very much tied to my childhood memories.
I went to Mumbai because that’s where my family is from, but I also travelled to Rajasthan, Udaipur, and Jaipur.

Q: And what did it smell like?

GORHAM: That’s the thing with India. It’s really the best and the worse for smells. It’s extreme. I really fell in love with the incense from the temples, which has really become one of my favourite raw materials to work around. But then there are the spices and the humidity. That was the first kind of connection to memory, as well—this place that had changed so much in ten years smelled exactly the same.

Q: Growing up, is there someone who had the most amazing fragrance that really affected you?

GORHAM: I think the first actual fragrance I finished was Green, which is very much based on how I remember my father’s family. And that was good and bad; it was bittersweet to be able to recreate that, because he left when I was quite young.
It was more the essence of a green bean, so it wasn’t green in the traditional sense.

Q: You also talk about gaining inspiration from travelling, and so we’re wondering where you’re travelling next.

GORHAM: It’s really one of those things that sets places apart are those smells. I’m planning a trip to Saudi Arabia, which seems quite rigid; even though it’s a part of the Middle East, it’s supposedly very unique. So, I’m really looking forward to that, from a visual perspective, but also culturally in terms of smells.

Q: And how much time will you spend there?

GORHAM: I have a daughter and a wife, so I try not to be gone for more than five to six days at a time ever.

Q: And how old is your daughter? Does she like fragrance?

GORHAM: She’s three years old. It’s really interesting because I speak to her about smells, and with her being aware of it [she’s] experiencing what I did after meeting Pierre for the first time. The awareness of it is really powerful. She’ll go into a public bathroom and say ‘why does it smell like this in there?’ We’ll walk into a restaurant and she’ll say ‘I like that smell.’ I find that very interesting because I don’t ever remember reasoning in that way before meeting Pierre, definitely not as a three-year-old.

Q: Thinking about fragrance as an education: Growing up, I feel, as North Americans, there was an interest in fragrance, but not an appreciation for its quality and range and the cultural part of fragrance. I feel like that’s changing.

GORHAM: Culturally, there are a lot of places that have a very rich tradition and history tied to perfume as a product—that’s one part of it. The part I find interesting, the educational part you mentioned, is much more than just about smell as a sense, just like sight, or feel, or taste, and I think it’s often overlooked, and I think with Byredo I was able to touch, you know not being trained, I was able to work outside the framework for perfume. Talk about smells that people can relate to and places and people, and I think that’s the idea of a collective memory that people tap into—like the idea of a father or a person, and India as an idea—as opposed to a long list of raw materials. I really tried to simplify the compositions by limiting raw materials and I created these sort of hate or love relationships with the fragrances. I had this idea of accessibility, whether people liked it or not.

Byredo fragrances currently sell at leading retailers worldwide: Holt Renfrew, Barney’s, Liberty and Colette and Bon Marché.

Black Saffron is an oriental fragrance, mixing sparkling Asian pomelo and juniper berries with Kashmiri saffron, black violet and a leather accord, sheer Cristal Rose, blond woods, raspberry and Haitian vetiver. $235 (100 ml),  www.byredo.com