Bal d'Afrique

Ben Gorham and Jérôme Epinette launched this in 2009 as an imaginary journey drawn from Gorham’s father’s diaries of time spent traveling in Africa. The house frames it around Paris in the late 1920s and the era’s fascination with African art, music, and dance. What you get is brighter and more specific: a citrusy, slightly bitter opening of bergamot and African marigold with buchu, a soft violet-and-cyclamen heart, and a dry, earthy base of vetiver and Moroccan cedar. It reads fresh and floral without turning soapy or heavy, then settles into a clean woody-musky dry-down. Officially genderless and widely worn that way.