Bond No. 9: A Fragrant Tribute to New York Born in the Wake of 9/11

“After 9/11, I wanted to do something for New York.
What could I, born in Paris, do for this city? That was the beginning of Bond No. 9.”

— Laurice Rahmé, founder and president

Essential Information

Founded: 2003
Founder: Laurice Rahmé
Based in: NoHo, New York, United States
Official website: https://www.bondno9.com

The Founder and the Origins of the Brand

From Paris to the World of Antiques

Laurice Rahmé was born and raised in Paris, France.
As a student, she studied art at the Louvre and ran her own antiques shop at the corner of Rue Saint-Denis and Rue de la Cossonnerie in the Les Halles district of Paris. This deep appreciation of art and craftsmanship would later find expression in Bond No. 9’s bottle designs and store interiors.

Joining Lancôme: A Career Beginning at 21

In 1973, Rahmé joined Lancôme at the age of 21 as international training director. At that young age, she was responsible for expansion in the Middle Eastern market, contributing to business development in 22 countries and reportedly tripling the skincare business.
Working across cultures in the Middle East and the West, with responsibility for Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and other markets, she developed a firm belief: “People are not all the same. Their food, clothes, color preferences, relationships, and tastes differ. Beauty products must adapt to diverse preferences.”

In 1976, she moved to New York as director of the Lancôme Beauté Institute and began working at the headquarters of L’Oréal USA, then known as Cosmair. Rahmé later described Lancôme as “my university (L’Oréal was my university).”

Meeting Annick Goutal: Discovering Niche Fragrance

Rahmé subsequently met the Parisian fragrance designer Annick Goutal (in Japanese) and decided to take responsibility for introducing her to the American market. From 1989 to 1995, as president and partner of Annick Goutal USA, Rahmé made the small Parisian brand a success in the United States.

Her approach was distinctive.

“When I brought Annick Goutal to America, it was the first success story in niche fragrance. Fifteen perfumes and one flacon design. The idea was to change the way people saw perfume.”

— Laurice Rahmé

She refused to settle for a small corner of a department-store fragrance counter and instead asked stores to create miniature in-store boutiques embodying the brand’s image. This attitude would carry through consistently into Bond No. 9’s later independent course.

Taking Charge of Creed USA

After her success with Annick Goutal, Rahmé acquired the American distribution rights for Creed (in Japanese) in 1995 and established “Laurice & Co.,” wholly financed by herself. With her own funds, she opened two shops on Madison Avenue in New York and another on Bond Street. That third shop was at 9 Bond Street, the address that would later give the brand its name.

“Whether at Lancôme or Annick Goutal, I always felt that my creativity was being held back in some way. Having grown up in Paris and studied art, I always had the artistry of perfume in mind. So this was a natural evolution of the business, because it is a passion.”

— Laurice Rahmé

9/11 and a Love Letter to New York: The Birth of Bond No. 9

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, became a life-changing event for Rahmé. With her office in downtown New York, she experienced the foul smell that lingered over the city for weeks afterward.

“After the attacks, that terrible smell hung over the city for weeks. I wanted to fill New York with beautiful scents again. In Paris, perfumers had been creating fragrances for individual neighborhoods for centuries. But no one had done that here yet.”

— Laurice Rahmé

Inspired by the way twentieth-century French perfumery had continued to create fragrances for Parisian districts, such as Jardin de Bagatelle, Champs Élysées, and 24 Faubourg, Rahmé embarked on an ambitious project to document twenty-first-century New York through scent.

In 2003, she formally founded Bond No. 9, opening a shop on the ground floor of a Second Empire cast-iron building on a cobblestone street in NoHo. Its address, 9 Bond Street, became the brand’s name. At its opening, it launched 16 “neighborhood fragrances” at once.

The official website describes Rahmé as the first woman to lead a perfume house in New York.

What Defines the Brand

A Fragrance Philosophy: Restoring Artistry

Bond No. 9’s brand mission has “two beautiful faces.”

“Our brand mission has two beautiful faces. One is to restore artistry to perfume-making. The other is to celebrate each New York neighborhood with its own individual and original scent.”

— Brand philosophy, official website

High concentrations of extract support this philosophy in the fragrances themselves. As a rule, Bond No. 9 perfumes use pure extracts at high concentrations of 18–30%, comparable to those of substantial eaux de parfum of the 1920s and 1930s. Against the roughly 5–20% concentrations of ordinary mass-produced perfumes, this emphasis on concentration can be seen as an expression of the brand’s belief in lasting fragrance.

In developing its fragrances, the house has collaborated with leading perfumers such as Maurice Roucel (in Japanese), Francis Camail, and Michel Almairac (in Japanese).

Bottle Design: The Star-Shaped “Superstar Flacon”

Bond No. 9 bottles have a distinctive star-shaped silhouette. Officially called the “superstar flacon,” the design has an iconic appearance that is hard to forget and is regarded by collectors as an object of particular value. Each fragrance has its own colors and surface decoration, visually expressing the character and world of its neighborhood.

Rahmé also designs the interiors of all the stores herself. The NoHo flagship pays homage to the Palace of Versailles, with crystal chandeliers, smoky mirrors, and signature lacquer-red chairs.

The house also offers limited-edition collections with bottles decorated in Swarovski crystals, giving them the character of luxury crafted objects beyond perfume alone.

A Commitment to Independence

Since its foundation, Bond No. 9 has consistently refused to become part of an outside corporate group. Rahmé maintains completely independent ownership, and the fact that 80% of its employees are women also forms part of the brand’s identity.

“No corporate takeover for Bond No. 9. I value the freedom to innovate and push boundaries.”

— Laurice Rahmé

The Fragrance Collection

The Core Collection: New York Neighborhoods

The foundation of the house is its collection of neighborhood fragrances named after districts of New York. Beginning with 16 at its founding in 2003, it had grown to at least 70 by 2019 and has since expanded further. Fragrances bearing New York place names, including Chinatown, Wall Street, Chelsea Flowers, Little Italy, and So New York, form its core.

Each fragrance is developed to capture a neighborhood’s “vibrations, history, the people who live there, and those who aspire to.” Wall Street, for example, contains a marine note of sea kale, while New Haarlem has coffee notes.

The I Love New York Collection

In 2011, in partnership with New York State, the house launched a fragrance series using Milton Glaser’s “I ♥ NY” logo. Comprising for Her, for Him, and for All, the three-fragrance collection expressed the diversity of the entire state, not just New York City.

The Scent of Peace

The Scent of Peace, combining grapefruit, blackcurrant, lily of the valley, cedarwood, and musk, is a fragrance that seems to embody the spirit of a brand born in response to 9/11. Its bottle features a dove in flight as a “messenger of peace,” and it became a bestseller. A men’s version was added in 2013. In recognition of the fragrance’s social significance, Rahmé became the first figure from perfumery to receive the UN Women for Peace Association’s Peace Award in 2015.

The Dubai Collection

The Dubai Collection represents an expansion beyond the geographical boundaries of New York. It comprises several fragrances named after gemstones, including Ruby, Amber, Diamond, and Emerald, and is characterized by an Oriental style where East and West, tradition and modernity intersect. The Dubai Diamond bottle is hand-decorated with at least 270 Swarovski crystals.

The Andy Warhol Collection

Beginning in 2007, the house entered into a licensing agreement with The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and developed a collection of flacons adorned with Warhol’s work. Fragrances were named after New York places associated with the artist, including Silver Factory, Union Square, and Lexington Avenue. The collaboration later ended, however, and the fragrances were repackaged under new names and in new packaging without Warhol’s name.

Bond Perfumista: A Custom Fragrance Service

The brand also offers a custom fragrance service called “Private Bond.” Staff known as “Bond Perfumistas” ask customers about their fragrance preferences and blend several perfumes in an individual combination to create a bespoke bottle. The brand describes this as a pioneering “world’s first at-home fragrance system.”

By the Way…

• One of the brand’s trademarks is the “Bond Mobile.” A British London taxi decorated to match its bottle designs is used for street marketing, driving customers and media editors to their destinations.
• The name Bond Street is said to have originated in the eighteenth century, when New York alderman Samuel Ward wished to leave his name behind by naming the street after the corporate bonds of the time. It is a decidedly unusual history for a perfume house’s name to include an origin in corporate bonds.
• In 2007, responding to the Bloomberg administration’s promotion of recycling, the house launched the fragrance industry’s first glass-bottle return and recycling program. In 2019, it also introduced the refillable New York Lips lipstick collection, further expressing its stance on sustainability.
• At the 2010 Fragrance Foundation Awards, Astor Place won in the women’s Nouveau Niche category, while Brooklyn won in the men’s Nouveau Niche category.