Bond No. 9 Perfumes - the Andy Warhol Series

Bond No. 9 is a niche perfume line with a special aim: to map New York in perfume. Well, to provide every neighborhood of New York with a fragrance of its very own, anyway. All Bond No. 9 perfumes are named after either a specific locality or a mood/sensibility that applies to the city in some way.

In 2007, Bond No. 9 launched a series of perfumes inspired by the works of that most New York of artists, Andy Warhol. The Andy Warhol series has been created in conjunction with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the wonderful bottle designs are all based on works by Andy Warhol. All of these perfumes use Andy Warhol as a major inspiration: his art works, his ideas and the places in New York with which he was most associated.

Silver Factory was the first of Bond No. 9's Andy Warhol-inspired fragrances and is named for Andy Warhol’s silver-walled - courtesy of aluminum foil and spray paint - Manhattan studio, the Silver Factory. Like all of the perfumes in this series, the bottle design is inspired by Andy Warhol’s art - in this case, the famous series of Campbell Soup can silkscreen prints from the 1960s.

Silver Factory includes notes of bergamot, grapefruit, incense, wood resin, cedar, amber, jasmine, iris, lavender and violet. The woody notes and incense make their presence felt immediately, but they’re subtle rather than strongly spicy. The floral notes are likewise subdued, and the mix of the two elements creates something very nice indeed. There’s also a slightly sharper note running through it, courtesy of the citrus, but overall this is a soft and smooth perfume, and definitely one of my favorite scents from Bond No. 9.

The bottle this time is not just one but ten different designs, all of them based on Andy Warhol’s ‘Flowers’ portfolio of screen prints, created in Warhol’s studio on Union Square, where there’s now a thriving greenmarket. Bond No. 9 has even thoughtfully made available a boxed set of all ten bottles for the serious collector.

However, if you’re more interested in the perfume itself rather than the bottle, you’ll find this perfume quite intriguing. “My favorite smell is the first smell of spring in New York,” Andy Warhol once said. This is definitely a Spring fragrance, but it’s more than just your usual pretty, fresh Spring floral. It manages to be a fresh green and a warm, sweet white at the same time. Or, to be more accurate, these two distinct elements alternate, taking turn on center-stage and weaving around each other very effectively. Notes include: lily of the valley, green stem, blue freesia, white birchwood, amber, and musk.

This is an excellent fragrance for Spring, when you’re more than ready to put Winter behind you, feel some warm sunshine on your face and breathe in the fresh greenery.

In the early 1950s, Andy Warhol lived in an apartment on Lexington Avenue in Murray Hill, which is where the name of this perfume comes from. At the time, early in his career, he was drawing lots of highly stylized and imaginative shoes. The bottle features one of his many shoe-related works from this period – which makes this perfume probably the perfect gift for the perfumista shoe-a-holics among us.

So what does a perfume inspired by Andy Warhol’s shoe illustrations smell like? Bond No. 9 says that it’s “a floral woody chypre (chypre meaning fresh citrus topnotes and a lingering forest-like base) with highly coveted contemporary gourmand notes—a brew of peony, orris, patchouli, sandalwood, cardamom, fennel, almonds, cumin, and even crème brulee. A seductive and intoxicating autumn-winter fragrance, Andy Warhol Lexington Avenue is the perfume equivalent of that rarity, an outrageously luxurious pair of stiletto heels that fit as comfortably as a glove. Wearing the scent, like wearing the shoes, will turn a woman’s walk into a sinuous glide.”

Personally, I wouldn’t quite go that far, but it’s a nice perfume. I particularly get the sweeter gourmand notes from it, with the woody notes contributing more subtly. It lasts for a good three or four hours at least. Not the most original of Bond No. 9’s perfumes, but a very pleasant one to wear.

Bond No. 9’s press release introduces Success is a Job in New York like this:

“At last… Bond No. 9 is dropping all pretenses and selling MONEY! (Sort of.) Introducing our latest eau de parfum, Andy Warhol Success is a Job in New York, with a $cent as $eductively $weet as a dollar $ign.”

The only really money-related thing about this perfume is the bottle, which features a stylized dollar sign (two different versions, with the same design in different colours), based on a design by Andy Warhol from the early 1980s. The name comes from the title of an article in Glamour magazine in the 1950s for which Andy Warhol provided the illustrations.

The top notes are citrus with a touch of spice: bergamot, mandarin, cardamom, coriander. The heart is a mix of florals. I really notice the rose, perhaps because rose is something that always stands out to me, but tuberose and jasmine also feature. The combination of these florals with the citrus make for a scent that’s a little sharp and fresh, but things keep developing beyond that. The base notes include vanilla, patchouli and amber, and these give the ‘Success’ a warm, sweet creaminess that balances out the whole thing very nicely.

This is my personal favorite of the five Andy Warhol scents from Bond No. 9. It’s one that I keep returning to. That mix of florals and slightly sweeter creamy gourmand notes cut with just a touch of citric sharpness is a winner!

The little town of Montauk was Andy Warhol’s seaside getaway. He bought the Church Estate there in the early 1970s and brought various famous friends to visit, creating what has been called a “Studio 54 by the sea.” His “Sunsets” series of screen prints date from this period, and four of these have been used to terrific effect in designing the lovely bottles for Bond No. 9’s Andy Warhol Montauk. There are two different bottle designs, with a different “sunset” on each side. These are my favorites of all the bottles in this series.

Bond No. 9 says that Montauk is “the world’s first summer sunset perfume” and goes on to describe Montauk like this:

"The fragrance captures the improbable descent of disco-mania on an unassuming fishing-village and nearby woodlands. Imagine a windswept Montauk sunset hinting at the steamy, sexy nighttime to come. In this twilight zone, the fresh and tangy initial flavors of blueberry and wild bergamot give way, first to sultry, sexy hyacinth, lily of the valley, and honeysuckle, and then to rich, clean forest-by-the-sea aromas—silver maple, red oak, driftwood, and amber. What we have here is a cunning interplay of rustic and urban."

To put it in more down-to-earth language, what we have here is a woody floral with a very slightly sharp note running through it that could be called citrusy, or metallic or – appropriately for a beach-inspired fragrance – aquatic.

Lasting time is moderate to good. This is a perfect summer fragrance.