Tobacco Vanille (Tom Ford)

Photo by Makia Minich

I've always struggled to understand the appeal of sweetly-flavored tobacco (super cheap "pipe tobacco") fragrances. My brain interprets the cloying sweetness of gas station tobacco as a crassly cheap, artificial construct, a difficult association to erase. It's no different for a downmarket cologne like Pinaud's Citrus Musk, which ostensibly smells of lemongrass but is also reminiscent of a citrus-flavored soda, like 7 Up or Sprite. When a fragrance smells like a flavor, it usually doesn't bode well. 

Tobacco Vanille (2007) is a luxury remake of L'Occitane's Eau des Baux (2006). Tom Ford opted to simplify the composition by clipping the number of notes down to three and calibrating them into smelling as divine as possible, which I think was at least a good try. Where Eau des Baux attempts complexity with cypress and pink pepper, Tobacco Vanille opts for the stark beauty of Dutch pipe tobacco with a silvery edge of cool musk, which strangely lifts the dankness of fire cured leaf into a sharper, greener place. This musk note eventually segues into vanilla and wraps itself around the tobacco like a mother swaddling her young. Its increasingly vanillic sweetness stops just shy of being overbearing by virtue of balance; TV is nothing if not fine-tuned. 

It's also Mephistophelian in strength: a few sprays and I can still smell it on my shirt a week later. This is where it succumbs to the same fate as EdB; a fragrance this powerfully aromtic doesn't really feel like it should be on my body. It feels like a room spray, or perhaps a candle. Yes, it uses good materials, and it's absolutely an appealing option for anyone who enjoys a good flavored tobacco scent, but I need something with a little more complexity and contrast if I'm going to have it on my person for the whole day. Tobacco Vanille would work fine in the morning, but by lunch I'd be ready for something else.