Personal Scent

Ben Gorham’s Homegrown Byredo Celebrates a Decade.

- Jessica Michault

WHEN BEN GORHAM first entered the fragrance world in 2006, he had a simple desire: to create a handful of scents that might trigger scenes from the past. Through the intimate potency of perfume, he hoped to return to his mother’s hometown in India and the people, places, and things that marked his life. Once he had reckoned the exact essences for each aroma, he distilled them into candles—a process he learned from online tutorials—simply giving out each creation thereafter as a gift to friends. When the demand for the uniquely perfumed candles began to strengthen, Gorham realized he might build a business around these products that could instantly generate personal connections. He alighted on the name Byredo, a sort of shorthand play on the Old English word “redolence,” which means sweet-smelling perfume.

“We are in a nice place in terms of maturity,” says Gorham 10 years later. “I think that, just like a person, a new brand spends a substantial amount of time figuring out who they are when they start out and how they want to be perceived.” Once a professional basketball player, he now sells his products in 62 different markets around the world, with offices in Paris, London, New York, and Tokyo, and a design studio in Stockholm. “The word is not that sexy, but ‘lifestyle’ is probably the best that defines [our] idea of multi-disciplines and multi-categories under one name.”