Byredo: The Stockholm Maverick Who Turns Memories into Scent

“I had no experience whatsoever with perfume. But I was deeply drawn to the medium of ‘smell’ and to the connection between memory and scent. I approached a perfumer and asked him to help me put together a creative project. That interest eventually became an ‘obsession.’”
— Ben Gorham, Founder of Byredo​

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Essential Information

• Brand name: Byredo
• Founded: 2006
• Place of founding: Stockholm, Sweden
• Founder: Ben Gorham​
• Official website: https://www.byredo.com
• Origin of the name: A coined word formed by shortening “By Redolence.” “Redolence” is an Old English expression meaning “a sweet, pleasant fragrance.”
• Current parent company: Puig, which acquired a majority stake in 2022. The transaction value is estimated at approximately €1 billion.

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The Founder and the Origins of the Brand

A Boy Raised Between Cultures

Ben Gorham was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1977. His father was Canadian, of Scottish and French-Canadian descent, and his mother was Indian. He grew up moving between Toronto, New York, and Stockholm, and this multicultural background would later become fundamental to his brand.

Chembur, on the outskirts of Mumbai, India, and the home of his maternal roots, always held a special place in Gorham’s memory. The incense rising from Hindu temples and the spice-laden air remained olfactory memories that would become the starting point of Byredo much later.

Basketball, Then Loss

Passionate about basketball from childhood, Gorham made the most of his 195 cm, or six-foot-five, frame, playing seriously in Canada and the United States. He eventually became a professional player in Europe, but visa problems brought his career to an impasse.

At twenty-five, his life as an athlete came to an abrupt end. The loss of something that had occupied every part of his day left the profound void familiar to many former athletes. Gorham subsequently worked in manual labor on construction sites while searching for a new direction.

Art School and a Fateful Encounter

Gorham then enrolled at an art school in Stockholm, studying a broad range of fine-art subjects including painting, photography, and history. His studies trained him in expressing emotion through visual media.

The turning point after graduation came entirely by chance: an encounter with Swedish perfumer Pierre Wulff.

“After graduating from art school, I met the perfumer Pierre Wulff completely by chance. That sparked my interest in the process of ‘translating particular memories into scent.’ I had always worked in visual media, but from the beginning I was fascinated by scent: an extremely abstract medium with an extraordinarily powerful capacity to evoke emotion.”
— Ben Gorham​

Through his conversations with Wulff, Gorham became captivated by the idea of recreating his memories through smell. But he was not a perfumer himself, and recognized that he had neither the aptitude nor the time to undertake professional training in the field.​

“I did not think I could reach their level. There are really very few perfumers who get to that level.”
— Ben Gorham​

From Kitchen Candles to the World

Gorham’s first experiment was making scented candles in the kitchen of his Stockholm home. At that stage, both his funds and his knowledge were limited.

“I made candles at night and sold them during the day. They were terrible. All I had was an idea and a lot of junk.”
— Ben Gorham​

Wulff, however, introduced Gorham to two leading perfumers: New York-based Jérôme Epinette and Paris-based Olivia Giacobetti (in Japanese). Gorham presented them with his own creative briefs, establishing a distinctive collaborative style in which he directed a perfume’s concept and emotional direction while leaving the actual composition to professionals. It was an unusual approach in the perfume industry.

After roughly two and a half years developing five scents, Byredo was officially presented in Paris in 2006.

Memories of His Father and Mother: The First Two Creations

Byredo’s first perfume, Green, was an attempt to recreate the smell of Gorham’s father. Its composition includes petitgrain, sage, jasmine, rose, honeysuckle, violet, tonka bean, almond, and musk.

“The first thing I made was the smell of my own father. But I realized that, while it was the smell of ‘my father,’ it was also something many people could relate to as the smell of a ‘father figure,’ whether their father or grandfather.”
— Ben Gorham​

Encens Chembur, released in 2008, grew out of memories of Chembur, his mother’s birthplace on the outskirts of Mumbai. Once a picnic spot, the area had undergone development by the time Gorham returned, but the smell of incense from the Hindu temples remained unchanged. Composed of bergamot, lemon, elemi, ginger, temple incense, nutmeg, labdanum, amber, and musk, the fragrance clearly established Byredo’s identity as a brand of “perfumes of memory.”

The scent of his father, the scent of his mother’s hometown: Byredo literally began with Gorham’s own family roots and memories.

The Path of Growth

Byredo grew at an exceptional pace for a niche fragrance brand.

• As of February 2013: Worldwide sales of approximately $30 million. The brand began appearing in leading concept stores around the world, including Colette in Paris, 10 Corso Como in Milan, Liberty in London, and Barneys New York.​
• 2013: London investment firm Manzanita Capital, the parent company of Diptyque and Space NK, acquired a majority stake, accelerating global expansion.
• 2015: Byredo opened its first directly operated US store in SoHo, New York.​
• 2017: The leather-goods collection debuted at Paris Fashion Week.​
• 2018: A flagship store opened at 199 rue Saint-Honoré in Paris.
• 2020: The makeup line launched in collaboration with artist Isamaya Ffrench.​
• 2021: Revenue reached €119 million.​
• May 2022: Spanish luxury group Puig acquired a majority stake, with the transaction valuing the brand at approximately €1 billion, or around ¥107 billion. L’Oréal and Estée Lauder were also reported to have participated in the bidding.
• 2023: The VIRASAAT fine-jewelry collection launched.
• June 2025: Gorham stepped down as chief creative officer and left Byredo. Full integration into Puig was completed.

“I am proud of what we have accomplished on this twenty-year journey. I am confident in Byredo’s bright future, and now entrust the brand’s strong identity entirely to Puig.”
— Ben Gorham, on his departure in 2025

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What the Brand Stands For

The Philosophy of Fragrance Creation: “Translating Memory”

At the heart of Byredo’s creative process is the idea of “translating memories and emotions into scent.” Rather than relying on market developments or trend analysis, Gorham conceives fragrances through his own intuition and subjective response.​

“Our process is not based on numbers, research, or trends. We begin with an idea and an emotion, then express them through a combination of smells.”
— Ben Gorham

In practical terms, the process works like this. Gorham is a habitual note-taker, recording things he sees and experiences while traveling on his smartphone or in notebooks, accumulating hundreds of fragments. When one idea has matured sufficiently, he develops a detailed creative brief to communicate the emotions and images to the perfumer. He reportedly uses every available means, not only words but photographs, music, films, and objects, to share the feeling he wants to achieve.

Every product on the shelf reaches its final form after roughly 150 rounds of trial and refinement.​

The Perfumers: Invisible Co-Creators

Jérôme Epinette and Olivia Giacobetti have played central roles as the “translators” of Byredo’s scents. Originally from Burgundy, France, Epinette once aspired to become a wine sommelier and works for Robertet. He has created many of Byredo’s signature fragrances, including Gypsy Water, Bal d’Afrique, and Pulp. Michel Almairac has also contributed to some creations.

Gorham is explicit: “I establish the direction and the origin and control that completely, but they, the perfumers, are the artists. They do the actual translation.”​

Bottle Design: Scandinavian Minimalism

Byredo’s bottle design was an important point of distinction from the outset. It was developed by Swedish designer Moses Voigt while he was at Acne Art Department, with a custom typeface created for the label.​

Based on modernist principles and the characteristics of early-twentieth-century Gothic lettering, the typeface was intended to be “modern yet timeless through simple elegance.”​

Gorham explains the inspiration behind the design as follows.

“The modernist era was the origin of commercial perfumery, the world of Chanel. Ask people what perfume is, and they think of Chanel No. 5. That era was an important reference point for Byredo’s design: a way for a brand without a history to give people the feeling of ‘perfume.’”
— Ben Gorham​

The cylindrical bottle, black domed cap, and monochrome label create a refined presence that embodies Scandinavian restraint and Gorham’s vision of “luxury that blends into everyday life.”​

Incidentally, the letter “B” in Byredo’s logo is designed to resemble “13,” Gorham’s jersey number during his basketball days. It is intriguing that the former athlete’s spirit quietly lives on in the brand’s most basic symbol.

The Unisex Philosophy

Many of Byredo’s perfumes are offered as unisex fragrances. This reflects the brand’s fundamental belief in responding to individual memories and emotions rather than gender, and Gorham has deliberately removed the boundaries between men and women.

“I make what I want to make. And fortunately, people share my idea of what they find beautiful.”
— Ben Gorham​

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The Fragrance Lineup: Key Collections

Byredo now offers several dozen fragrances. Here, we explore the structure of its key collections and some of its best-known creations.

The Core Collection: Eau de Parfum

At the center of Byredo is a group of eaux de parfum, each with its own story. These creations draw inspiration from places, people, emotions, and cultures.

Gypsy Water: A fresh opening of juniper berries, lemon, bergamot, and pepper moves through pine needles and incense into a base of vanilla, sandalwood, and amber. Evoking the free spirit of wanderers, or “gypsies,” and the lingering smell of a campfire, it is one of Byredo’s signature cult favorites.

Bal d’Afrique: A perfume inspired by the travel diaries Gorham’s father kept during fifteen years in Africa. Imagining a fusion of 1920s Paris and African culture, it features bergamot, neroli, African marigold, cyclamen, cedarwood, vetiver, and other notes. It is said to have taken longer to develop than any other fragrance in Gorham’s career.

“My father’s diaries brought my imagination to life. Bal d’Afrique reflects all of that. It is an imaginary journey, and at the same time a complete celebration of how I see African culture and its influence.”
— Ben Gorham​

Blanche: A floral, musky fragrance expressing purity and cleanliness through the concept of “white.” Composed of notes including rose, peony, and white musk, it recalls freshly washed linen or new snow. It is one of Byredo’s signature fragrances with a particularly strong following among women.​

Mojave Ghost: Inspired by the ghost flower native to the Mojave Desert, which blooms in an almost waterless environment. Its notes are ambrette, Jamaican nesberry, violet, sandalwood, magnolia, amber, and cedarwood.

Encens Chembur: As described above, this fragrance centers on temple incense from Chembur, his mother’s hometown. Its notes include bergamot, lemon, elemi, ginger, temple incense, labdanum, amber, and musk.​

Mumbai Noise: Launched in 2021, this ambitious fragrance develops personal memories of Chembur into an attempt to capture the noise and diversity of contemporary Mumbai as a whole. Its composition deliberately embraces contrasts and contradictions through davana, an Indian herb, leather, coffee, tonka bean, and other notes.

Other creations include La Tulipe, Pulp, Black Saffron, Super Cedar, and Slow Dance, each rooted in memories of a place or a moment.

Night Veils: Extrait de Parfum

Byredo’s higher-end Night Veils line is an exceptionally concentrated collection offered as extrait de parfum, or perfume extract. Taking night-blooming flowers such as lily, jasmine, and rose as its theme, it inhabits a sensual world in which “fragrance becomes more powerful in the dark.”​​

Key creations include Casablanca Lily, Reine de Nuit, and Sellier, followed by the later additions Vanille Antique, Rouge Chaotique, and Tobacco Mandarin. Concentrated enough for a single drop to last for hours, this line embodies Byredo’s concept of a “ritual of scent” in its purest form.

Home Fragrance: The Story of the Chai Candle

One of the most emblematic pieces in Byredo’s home collection is the Chai candle. Recreating the scent of chai from the Indian subcontinent, specifically masala chai, a drink made by simmering spices and black tea and combining them with milk, it is directly tied to Gorham’s memories of his grandmother’s home.

“The Chai candle was a very direct translation of my grandmother, who died when I was in my early teens. She was a special person and my only real connection to India and Chembur, where my mother grew up. This scent brings me tremendous warmth and joy. I hope people will build their own relationship with it.”
— Ben Gorham​

With notes including cardamom, clove, ginger, incense, mate, birch tree, and warm latte, this characteristically Byredo creation shows how personal memories can become a source of universal connection.​

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Collaborations and Expansion into New Categories

To an extent unusual for a perfume brand, Byredo has repeatedly collaborated with creators from other fields.

• M/M Paris: The French creative studio has been deeply involved for many years in the brand’s visual identity, advertising, store design, and more. Gorham has described it as his “most important collaboration.”
• Virgil Abloh / Off-White: Co-created the fragrance Elevator Music in 2018.​
• IKEA: Launched the OSYNLIG collection of home-fragrance candles in 2020.​
• Travis Scott: Released the collaborative fragrance Space Rage in 2020.​
• Inez & Vinoodh: Released the fragrance 1996 in collaboration with the fashion-photography duo in 2013.​
• Lucia Pica: Has overseen the makeup line as creative image and makeup partner since 2022.​

Through such collaborations, Byredo has evolved into a lifestyle brand spanning not only perfume but makeup, since 2020; leather goods, since 2017; eyewear; jewelry, since 2023; and even apparel and food, through a tea collection.

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Incidentally…

• Gorham himself does not wear perfume. “You probably won’t believe it, but I don’t wear perfume myself,” he said in an interview with MECCA. Because his work involves engaging with scents all day, he reportedly prefers as neutral an environment as possible at home.​
• Michael Jordan is Byredo’s “spiritual founder.” Gorham has idolized MJ since childhood and made the famous story of Jordan being cut from his high-school team, whose accuracy is debated, a guiding principle in his own life. He startled an interviewer by declaring in all seriousness, “Michael Jordan is the direct reason Byredo’s makeup succeeded.” When it was suggested that the high-school story might actually be a myth, Gorham replied:​

“That was the story they told. So I believed it. (That’s the story they told, so that’s the one I ate.)”
— Ben Gorham​

• He has spoken openly about having dyslexia. “I don’t read many books. I’m dyslexic, so reading was not something I was good at,” he has said in an interview. Instead, he often draws inspiration from visual and auditory sources such as film, Instagram, and music.​
• His dream is to design a car from scratch. Asked in a Whitewall interview what he had not yet made but would like to create one day, Gorham replied, “I have always dreamed of designing a car truly from the ground up.”​
• The brand has won numerous awards. These include a 2013 Wallpaper Design Award for packaging design, a 2017 CEW Beauty Award for Velvet Haze, and a 2018 Allure Best of Beauty award for Eleventh Hour.​

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