Fire Island – light and fresh and intimate

If we were playing a word association game and the word I gave you was summer, I’d wager you’d say words like vacation, beach, fun, swimming, relaxing, BBQs, tropical drinks, friends, sunbathing. I doubt you’d say work, office, overtime, bored, boss…you get the idea.

There’s something about the word summer that evokes freedom. And Fire Island from American indie house line Bond No. 9 has the same effect.

Bond No. 9 was founded in 2003 by French-born Laurice Rahmé, who tends to name its fragrances after iconic neighbourhoods in NYC, like Chinatown and Andy Warhol's Silver Factory. Fire Island isn’t exactly in NYC. It lies just off the south shore of Long Island, and its beaches are a favorite weekend getaway for New Yorkers in the summertime. And Fire Island isn’t strictly an ‘American’ fragrance. Let me explain.

When Rahmé was casting about for a summer fragrance to add to the Bond No. 9 line, she wanted something reminiscent of the summer days she spent on French beaches as a child. She commissioned Michel Almairac to create a scent that smelled of Ambre Solaire, the famous French suntan lotion. The result was Fire Island.

I didn’t grow up on the beaches of France, and I’ve never been to Fire Island, but I can tell you that Bond No. 9’s Fire Island is so evocative of summer days at the beach that no matter how old you are, or where you sunbathed, swam or built sandcastles, Fire Island will resonate with you.

It opens with a clean ozonic note that smells like a breeze that comes off the sea. A note of cardamom warms it up. As it blooms, a sunscreen accord drifts in. It’s honey-sweet, floral and fresh from neroli, airy and delicate from white musk and dry and woody from skin musk. Then, tuberose rises up and connects with the neroli, extending its floralcy with its creamy opulence. Patchouli is dark and rich, and the yin to the yang of the flowers making sure they don’t dominate Fire Island.

The drydown is light, fresh and intimate. What I love about Fire Island is that it creates the mood of freedom that summer has. That smell of having been at the beach all day – cool sea, bright sun, warm skin – that lasts into the night makes it so much more than a ‘beachy’ scent.