Launched in 2007 by the French niche line Etat Libre d’Orange, Tom of Finland is a beautiful olfactory homage to the artist Touko Laaksonen, also known as Tom of Finland. His stylized homoerotic fetish drawings of muscular sailors, bikers, lumberjacks, and construction workers profoundly influenced gay culture in the late 20th century and have earned a place in New York's Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection.

Tom of Finland opens with aldehydes and lemon that create a gorgeous rubber accord. This is not the hot, smoky rubber smell of Bulgari Black, this a clean and enticing smell of rubber. It gets green as it blooms from birch leaves, pine, galbanum and cypress. For a while, it smells like a fresh forest on me. It soon becomes leathery, spicy, warm, and woody due to safraleine, while pepper adds more warmth and spiciness. Safraleine has a rose facet too, that is heightened by geranium, which gives the fragrance a floral aspect that rounds it out perfectly. At times I get a whiff of plastic that isn’t jarring or odd because it belongs.  At the base, vanilla and tonka bean give it a cozy sweetness, while iris and vetiver lend it an earthy undertone. But the part I love is a salty-skin note warmed by musk and smoothed by a soft, sensuous note if suede.

The drydown is clean, green, salty and sweet on me. It’s complex, unusual and beautiful and not edgy, raunchy or lascivious at all. It respects the life of the man who was Tom of Finland and is a perfect olfactory homage to an artist whose work had an impact and who made a difference.

Notes: Aldehydes, lemon, birch leaves, pine, safraleine, pepper, cypress, galbanum, geranium, vanilla, tonka bean, orris, vetiver, pyrogened styrax, suede, musk and ambergris.