Tom Ford Noir pour Femme
Tom Ford (2015)

I absolutely adore this! I cannot believe Tom Ford discontinued this beauty.
In the opening, I get a sharp ginger and spiced orange rind. That quickly transitions into a smooth nutty resin with touches of leather. After a while, I start to sense a milky, creamy and nutty rosewater with orange blossom somewhere I the background. To me this is dark and spicy. It’s just slightly more feminine but perfectly unisex to my nose. It has nice projection giving me a delightful scent bubble for a few hours and then becomes a skin scent. If my skin is hydrated, I get 8+ hours of wear. I was able to score a full 1.7 bottle for under $100. I’d say that would be an absolute deal if you can acquire a bottle for $100 or less. The resellers are asking for hundreds of course. I’ll already looking for a back up bottle.

The opening is a rich mix of sweetish spices, which are nested around a central nucleus of a restrained ginger impression. This spicy mix is soft, and not that dark; an undertone of citrus, mainly a restrained orange and a sweet mandarin add a certain glowingly brighter element in the background; touches of bergamot are transiently evident too.

The drydown turns floral, based on a somewhat pallid green-woody jasmine note. A rose absolute is present too, but it is not lasting long and remains weaker on me, whilst a concurrent orange blossom is more intensive and vivid on me. a milky accord is probably die to a Kulfi note; it is not particularly spicy on me.


Whiffs of a an airy and resinous nature lead into the later stage. A very discrete spicy vanilla is heralding the base, with the originals spicy note fading away at this time. a very light-footed ambery sandalwood is accompanying the vanilla, but the latter prevails in the end. In the finale a slightly indolic-sweet impression of nail polish is briefly making an appearnace.

I get moderate sillage, very good projection, and an excellent ten hours of longevity on my skin

A nice start of this scent for warmer winter and cooler autumn days does not detract from the pallid and at times generic character during the second half. The performance is very good. A reasonable office scent. 2.75/5

Very "perfume-y". Subtle citrus and spice. Well-mixed flowers. Typical vanilla-amber base. Overall it's well made but, I have had / tried many fragrances like this, with similar "notes". Too expensive for what it is. It IS enjoyable which is why I give it a positive rating.

Whenever "Noir" is used in the title of a perfume, I'm expecting something sophisticated, chic, avant garde, with heavy hitting notes like patchouli, leather, oud, pepper - you get the idea. Then came Tom Ford Noir Noir for Women. I never expected such a warm, sweet, soft, yet still mature fragrance. This one has vanilla and amber, but before it sinks into tooth ache inducing sweetness, rose, ginger, sandalwood, citrus and jasmine bring it up to seductive siren speed.

I really like the way this smells on a woman but there is also just enough of a masculine touch here that makes me like it even more, almost as if I could also wear it.

The smell is sweet vanilla and burnt sugar, mixed with clean, floral musks. Something about this reminds me of a boozy drink but I can't place it.

Projection is good, especially during the first couple hours. Longevity just seems to be average.

I so wanted to love this, but to me this is generic and old fashioned. It doesn't sparkle or shine on me in the way that I feel other Tom Ford fragrances do. Like Black Orchid Voile de Fleur, this reminds me of a woody oriental vanilla scent my grandmother wore in the 90s. There is a bit of a comforting smell in the dry down, but it's too heavy in the meantime to make getting to the comfort worth it for me.

Noir pour Femme is your usual masculine fragrance, except it's feminine. I love it for this reason. It's spicy but sweet. It's got fruit, flowers, amber and vanilla. It's powerful but powdery. Awesome. Longevity and sillage are good!

All bagged up and ready to go – that's often the pose of Tom Ford's perfume offerings. The i's are dotted and the t's are crossed, and if it's all a bit familiar, then what the hell, at least it's thorough. What we get is a musky, ambery vanilla that wears like a thick cloud and will satisfy yearnings for voluptuousness while also making a bid for maternal warmth. Because, hooo boy, this perfume sure is calculated and it's safe.
The fleeting top notes offer a whizz of chocolate orange, before the orange evaporates and the chocolate morphs into the curious Play-Doh vanilla that's at the heart of this offering. It's a thick and foggy accord, with one foot firmly in the gourmand camp, and the other surrounded in a plastic haze of florals – as if someone had added a dash of Tocade to the mix. My nostrils were pricked for the kulfi note promised, but as someone who has consumed vats of the stuff, I don't find a trace of it. Unless the saturated character of this perfume is supposed to suggest it; to me that just gives it an off-putting deprived-of-air closeness.
Supporting this gloopy plasticine vanilla is a predictable woody amber base, firmly underlining the mass market goal. All would be well, if the execution were something to behold. But alas, the heavy-handedness makes me feel as if I've been force fed.
No doubt perfumes like this make a better impression on bystanders who just get a whiff of something that promises cookies and warm milk (perfect for the infantile age we live in), but wearing it just feels like I've added an extra layer of blubber.

Often, the frags that I end up wearing the most don't impress me the most first time out. And so it was with Noir Pour Femme. I tried it at Sephora and I liked it, but I literally said out loud, "Really?" I guess I was expecting something a little stranger and edgier, something unlike what I'd smelled before.

And this goes right to Claire's point - we've smelled this kind of thing before with Organza Indecence and the original Addict. And actually, my lizard brain connected Noir directly to Joop Femme from 1987! For a moment, Noir gave me this big, disorienting, happy/sad whoosh of nostalgia for a very particular moment in my youth, and I didn't get why that was happening. But when I got the nostalgia a second time, I realized it's because it smells like my memory of how Joop smelled on me when it first came out. Just looked at the pyramid for Joop Femme, and they do have a lot of notes in common...Wow.

I was a massive fan of the drydown of the original Addict when it came out. There was a certain green note in it that smelled really toxic to me, so after a particularly bad day with it, I auctioned my bottles. Though its weird burned, thick, narcotic vanilla, that was just the best, and when I learned it had been reformulated, I felt like I'd made a huge mistake in letting it go.

So along comes Noir, and in a way, it's nothing groundbreaking. And also, it's just what I always wished Addict was, and I haven't found anything I like this much in a while, and I wear the hell out of it, and I could go a little obsesso-hoardy with it. My single favorite family is warm amber/resin scents that aren't particularly floral and feminine, and have a little bit of an aromatic edge to them. The ginger and mastic(?) here add enough interest for me, and there's a mellowness and stealth to it that suit me far better than its aggressive predecessors' personalities did. For it doesn't necessarily declare itself to be a prestige perfume - could be a particularly appealing mix of hippie or BPAL oils, or something from Lush. Actually, it's got the resin-y feel in common with their All Good Things, which I also love...

I don't think Noir has the sillage of most of Ford's other scents, though on me, its longevity is stupid - I can testify that two sprays will go 48 hours.

I originally was looking for a patchouli-type perfume and for some reason this came up on the search in Sephora.

I thought of this scent as very woodsy with the ending of vanilla/amber.

This scent lasts all day, however, the most interesting part of it fades within the first 30 minutes.

My husband always comments on how good I smell with this perfume, and I think it attracts men in general.

I use this perfume as my winter scent.

For Spring it's DG Rose the One, I'm still figuring out Summer, and Fall is Karma by Lush.

Tom Ford Noir Pour Femme is a big-boned, 90's style floral vanilla very much in the style of Givenchy's Organza Indecence and the original, pre-reformulation Dior Addict. In fact, this smells so like those perfumes that the cynic in me is tempted to think that savvy Tom Ford was browsing eBay one day, happened to see what everyone was willing to pay for even partial bottles of the original Addict and Indecence, and a little light bulb went off in his head.

So, how did he do?

Well, let's say that it's neither the masterpiece nor the mediocre piece of crap that Tom Ford fans or detractors would have you believe. Actually, it's a very competent piece of designer work that aims for a particular target and totally lands it.

For women yearning for the va-va-VOOM of 90's vanilla powerhouses built with Jessica Rabbit-style curves, this will be your jam.

Noir Pour Femme opens with a bitter orange and stale milk chocolate accord, briefly recalling a Terry's Chocolate Orange, and then slides into a heavy, plasticky vanilla that owes all of its cues to the orchid flower and none to the vanilla bean. It's sort of Black Orchid-lite at this point, minus the repellent tuber and cucumber notes. The vanilla is musky and floral, and it might fold over under the weight of its own voluptuousness but for the waft of bad-gal cigarette and the sour tang of fresh ginger root acting in consort to cut the cream.

The trajectory from opening notes to the base is rather short, but I'm not blaming Tom Ford for doing what every other designer is doing, which is to frontload all the rich notes and leave the heart and base to deflate like a balloon (the attenuation happening just after you've already handed over the credit card, of course). The base here is a typical ambery, woody oriental affair – nothing too exceptional but (to give credit where credit is due) nothing even vaguely synthetic-smelling in that Iso E Super or potent woody amber aromachemical way.

The whole shebang is a Greatest Hits tour of some of the high points from Tom Ford's own stable of scents (the plummy ginger from Plum Japonais, the vanilla from Tobacco Vanille, the heavy, musky orchid from Black Orchid, and the bitter orange from Sahara Noir) as well as from the powerhouse vanillas from the 90's (the orange vanilla from Organza Indecence, and the boozy, smoky floral vanilla from Addict).

There's also a distinctly sleazy, morning-after-the-night-before quality to Noir Pour Femme. If you've ever yearned for the days when you stumble home from a nightclub at 6 in the morning, lipstick smeared and your lips stained with cheap wine, smelling like last night's smoke and wearing some random man's black leather jacket, the Noir Pour Femme is for you. Or even if you still do that. I'm not judging.

Noir Pour Femme is going to be a massive hit. There does seem to have been a cult-like yearning for a heavy, va-va-voom floral vanilla in the style of Organza Indecence and Dior Addict – and Noir Pour Femme totally fills this gap. Tom Ford put his cool commercial goggles on and engineered something to fit a straight man's list of desires – curves, vanilla, softness, sweetness, muskiness, and so on. Expect this to turn up on every list of fragrances made from now on that men find utterly irresistible and sexy on women.

Noir Pour Femme clearly speaks of a sensual night, a sexy yet mysterious, little black dress deep make up and exotic fantasies. Sweet but not in a childish way, strong but not enough to be overpowering. This captivating scent is made even more irresistible by the gourmand creamy touch of sweet and addictive notes of vanilla&amber. Ideal for a special date in a moment she would be the fireplace during a indoor date. Powdery, sultry, elegant, rich, glamorous, delicate, voluptuous, intriguing and simply gorgeous.

The top notes are decorated with citruses and ginger, elegant and charming floral of rose and jasmine are appearing in the heart, while creamy amber scent united with vanilla dominates the base create a hazy reverie of glamour and temption. A bit strong in the opening but gets softer and creamier as it dries down. The scent is sexy and at the sametime gourmand without being foody. This would be excellent layered over a rich, linear vanilla fragrance. Definitely a quality perfume for grown ups of whatever age.