Tom Ford Lost Cherry Review

Tom Ford Lost Cherry is a puzzle.  I’ve been sniffing it since it first came out last year, which in perfume time is forever ago.

First, hate, then love, then meh.  I have to give it to Tom for producing something that I can’t classify how I feel about it pretty quickly.  Not even mad about the name.  In a world where fragrances are competing crazily for attention, if calling something Lost Cherry or Rose Prick happens, well, a guy has to make a buck.

Here’s what I get – in varying doses depending on the day – big old snoot full of cherry cough syrup.  It’s a hyperreal idealized cherry, over the top all in sweet syrupy maraschino level.  Then… oh, hey, what is that?  Little tobacco, little more. Okay, grandpa pipe. And then it gets tricky.  The florals and woods wrap around those little plump sticky sugared cherries, hug them tighter and tell them, shhhhh, stop trying so hard.  Tonka makes them all quit fighting, and we head off  into this really soft, beautiful, slightly cherried woody floral

With a single small dose, this whole fragrance dance is not long enough.  So I dump on more.

Okay, mostly because that opening of sugar-drenched cherries is weirdly addictive – I looooove cherries!  Add more, add more.

Every time I dump more on, I love it harder after the over the top cherries fade.  Is this just thrilling trash on the startup, or is that drydown really posh and great?  As it turns out, both/and is the correct answer.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Notes list stolen from Kafkaesque – black cherry accord, bitter almond, griotte sirup Scenttek™, Turkish rose absolute Orpur®, jasmine sambac, sandalwood, vetiver, cedar, Peru balsam, roasted tonka Orpur.

What others are saying about Tom Ford Lost Cherry

So I thought, let’s run around the perfume-i-verse and find out how everyone else feels because I feel certain that I’m probably all by myself in love for this little cherry tart.   Am I alone here?

The Cut says “Inhale a big whiff of Lost Cherry and you’ll get fresh tobacco mixed with the candy-sweet scent of Luxardo Maraschino Cherries. It’s one of the brand’s first food-inspired fragrances, and one that straight-up smells like a syrupy, drippy dessert. You might smell it and think of Shirley Temples and cigarettes. Maybe you have an aunt who smokes and likes to bake cherry pies — this will recall her. Or maybe it’ll remind you of a time you went to a bar wearing cherry Chapstick.”

Yup, co-sign.

Victoria compares it to Serge Feminite du Bois, which makes sense, though I find the Lost Cherry to be less fruity over the long haul of smelling, but it certainly is in the Serge fruit basket perfume model.

I was shocked to find Kafkaesque liked it, “ripe, juicy, sticky, succulent black cherries, splashed with a generous amount of boozy amaretto liquor and equally boozy vanilla, then lightly sprinkled with a pinch of confectioner’s sugar before served up on a small platter made out of roses and woods. The vanilla appears out of nowhere, smelling boozier than regular sugared vanillin but also boozier than ethyl maltol vanilla.” Go read the rest if you haven’t.

Kafkaesque also found that the larger application made it better – maybe it’s just that what the perfume does becomes so much more apparent when it is completely surrounding your senses.

The open should not deter you from spending time with it, you did not just grab a Swisher Sweet cigar by mistake. Okay, that may be what is throwing me,  we used to get stupid teenager drunk and smoke Swisher Sweets. Oh,  do not cringe, I’m not about to launch into some how I lost my cherry story!  I mean, I could, but ugh, no.  That photo over there is me at about 17 – I’m the one on the right.  That was a seriously stupid teenage night, and the Swisher Sweets are probably in a pocket somewhere, along with peppermint Schnapps.  Those are my two high school besties, Cindy and Sue. I know, we were just missing Karen.  I really do think we were as cool as we thought we were, though.  I mean, that is a CPO jacket I’ve got on.

Ultimately, I have decided the Lost Cherry represents the entire trajectory of memory – something sharply memorable, unforgettable that may not be all that happy or great – though it could have parts of that –  but it is something you love(d) with silliness – like cherries! – and it always fades, sharp edges lost in the mists of time and forever re-shaped by memory’s untrustworthy razor. You lose so much of the present’s vivid juiciness – and also its harshness and pain – and that makes the softer, rounder, fuzzier memory so much better.  So. Yeah.  Genius.