Vert de Fleur
Tom Ford (2016)

The opening is an interesting blend of a fresh floral bouquet with a herbal undertone. Iris and a stronger hyacinth start it off, with a greener jasmine following in tow very soon. After a while a smiling orange blossom and a somewhat nonspecific rose buttress the floral frontline. The fresher side is created due to a brighter neroli with a uplifting bergamot, and later re-enforced by a noon-woody vetiver impression. A hint of herbs - basil with whiffs of carrot leaves - briefly appears in the background.

The other group of ingredients is a herbal-spicy cluster. Fairly much from the start one sees the gradual development of a galbanum note with its warm feeling; initially in the background but gradually it is gaining prominence. A soft and slightly leather-influenced patchouli with a weakly mossy undertone join in towards the end.

I get moderate sillage, excellent projection, and a good eight hours of longevity on my skin.

This green-aromatic floral scent with a gent;y spicy leaning works well for spring days. It has some original features, and especially the first half is crafted very well. Some notes as rather pallid though, whilst other are more convincing. Overall 3.25/5

Tom Ford is not a house I've explored very much, particularly his private blends. I think they're a bit overpriced, and they tend to be more popular with the gents then with the ladies.

However, I wholeheartedly agree with all the positive reviews here on BN for Vert de Fleur, as well as Luca Turin's 4-star review - these are what led me to seek out and try this fragrance. It's an absolute beauty, and a must-try for green floral lovers.

I don't get a lot of retro references in Vert de Fleur. It smells to me like a contemporary green floral, however it has much more depth, richness and complexity than other contemporary green florals like Bel Respiro or No. 19 Poudre, and is less mass appealing. I have nothing against these latter two fragrances - I own and love Bel Respiro as an easy-going fresh green floral, and it's a favorite of mine during the summer. But Vert de Fleur is on another level. If I had to deconstruct this fragrance, I would say it's a very rich, deep, green galbanum combined with a very smoothly blended floral accord. It's hard to pick out any florals individually, and it stays very green very deep into the drydown. It's not overly feminine though despite the florals - it's probably as unisex as No. 19 and other great vintage greens like Givenchy III.

A bottle of this will be mine before the end of summer - I think it's been discontinued but there are still some bottles around. Looks like I discovered this beauty in the nick of time.

Like a green scape for city prisoners, the rain of spring that brings life and smile. A delightfully green scent. Unisex but in a feminine way. She is strong but kind and well mannered woman. She is intelligent and refined. This could be a great scent for those who don't like general, bombastic sweetness. It exudes class, elegance and joy the vivre in a french way. Bold, sharp, bitter, fresh, flowery.

VDF opens taking you in a meadow full of grass, some cut, some full of those fantastic herbes folles. Little by little you are transported to a town where the smell of grass is mixed with smooth, love, human warmth symbolized by the flowers that take the scene after the green. Resinous galbanum and sharp vetiver all in equal measure mixed to provide us with a truse classic vibe that could have been worn by cool businesswoman.

I'm usually not a fan of green scents, but this one is different. More “perfumy” than herbal. The dry down is particularly lovely.
Totally unisex. And great.

A pleasant, very floral exploration within the "Les Extraits Vert" collection from Tom Ford.

It's an aromatic-floral-green experience that feels well-crafted and classy. Full of freshness and maturity, Vert de Fleur bears a close resemblance to Chanel No.19 EdP for ladies, another floral-green scent.

Starts out initially with bitter greenness, from the galbanum; the citrus-spice duo is a nice bright combo that fades fairly quickly, as if to introduce the florals as the star of this fragrance. Iris adds a powdery, starchy sweet boiled carrot touch; hyacinth is present, with its beautiful oily floral-greenness; jasmine and rose add their incomparable flowery freshness.

Also, woodiness is incidentally evident in Vert de Fleur (no wood notes were listed in the fragrance triangle, so it must be a composite perception from notes like galbanum); and that along with the warm green oakmoss, patchouli, and vetiver, add a slight masculine feel to what could easily be an entirely feminine fragrance.

For me, I would have a hard time sporting this scent, although I have a LOT of respect for it. It leans towards ladies, to be worn by more seasoned wearers. Younger wearers may not flock to it.

Don't let anyone ever tell you that they "can't make them like they used to", because this seems Tom Ford's mode of operation with some of his Private Blend creations. I don't know who the nose behind Vert de Fleur (2016) is, but it's clearly somebody who loves the old 70's "free-spirited" green floral chypres, and if you stuck this in an old Estée Lauder bottle instead of a Tom Ford one, I wouldn't know the difference. Vert de Fleur is part of a new four-piece set celebrating the use of the galbanum "green note" of the 70's, sitting alongside Vert de Bois, Vert d'Encens, and Vert Bohème all of the same year. I've smelled the others and Vert de Bois is probably the second best in the series; it's certainly more wearable by a man not feeling so secure in his masculinity to wander far in the unisex realm, but isn't nearly as timeless in composition as this. Vert de Fleur seems to have the feeling of being an apprentice to the green chypre greats, bottling it's own take on what it's studied in the process for the world to see that "it can still be done", and although this proposition offers no value other than to vintage fans, Private Blend scents tend to be little more than musings in a bottle anyway, without the fetters of needing to sell millions hampering them.

The opening of Vert de Fleur is pretty standard-course for this venerated genre, with a softer take on the bitter bergamot and galbanum opening, which actually sticks around less time than any of the older creations from which this draws inspiration. The idea here I feel was to showcase the florals more, rather than make them fight for elbow room with the green note, and after a basil flickering comes and goes, it's on the the floral bouquet middle. Hyacinth, neroli, rose, and jasmine comprise this gorgeous middle, especially on skin. I implore that this isn't one that can be sampled on a card, as you simply need to spray this on you and let it develop to get the full appreciation here. After the florals settle down, we've got vetiver, patchouli, and oakmoss to finish this off. I'm not sure how Tom Ford got past IFRA here, so either he just didn't care (which will restrict this being sold in Europe without a waiver being signed by the selling store), or he got some of that fancy fractured stuff Guerlain plays with in their reformulations. I find this most compares to a hybrid of the stark Jacomo Silences (1978) and the more hyacinth-lead Revlon Charlie (1973), but it's more complex than that and isn't loud like either of them can be on skin, but it does glow quite a bit more in close quarters.

Well, if you like Chanel No. 19 (1971), Alliage (1972), Aromatics Elix1r (1971), Estée Lauder Private Collection (1973), Avon Emprise (1976) or anything of this ilk, then Vert de Fleur is going to be like a dream come true. Best part? This stuff won't have you going gaga over reformulations or trying to choose between eau de toilette, pure parfum, or anything else because eau de parfum is the only choice, and there's just the one formula at present (which may change of course). I actually think young ladies are going to have a harder time with this than young guys, because the "feminine" perfume market has moved so far away from this style by large that it might not even seem very feminine to most without the knowledge of perfume history. Everyone these days is chasing "fruity patchouli" or "floral citrus apology" when they're not going ham on a game of Candy Crush with your nose, which is a shame. None of those fashionable tropes really strike me as any particular gender, just extremely juvenile in the way a little kid loves the smell of strawberry shampoo regardless of being a boy or a girl, and it's women who are forced to suffice with that smell if they buy today's mainstream perfumes. This is a blind buy for the chypre fan, but for everyone else, this is best sampled, but you might have to ask the Tom Ford sales rep to look under the counter, as this one is was never really relevant even when new.