About three years ago, Ben Gorham, the founder of Stockholm-based fragrance house Byredo, teamed up with legendary fashion photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin on a scent inspired by the couple's beautifully unsettling photograph of a teenage girl, "Kirsten 1996." Originally produced as a holiday gift for close friends, it wasn't long before word spread and the threesome found themselves bombarded with requests to make the scent commercially. Lucky for us, they listened. The result is "1996," a blend of juniper berries, black pepper, patchouli, black amber and vanilla. It's a combination of light and dark notes meant to evoke the original photo that is, as Gorham notes, "something very beautiful and angelic" but also, with the girl's glossy lips and "eyes rolled back in an euphoric state," an image filled with "disturbance and darkness." He adds, "I want the wearer to understand that things can be both beautiful and ugly at the same time." The scent is available at Barneys and online.
