The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Fantastic Man started as a collaboration between Ben Gorham and the editors of Fantastic Man magazine. Not a fragrance about any particular man, but the idea of one. The kind who reads the paper on Sunday, wears good shoes without thinking about it, and never explains his jacket choice. The composition borrows from the classic cologne template, rendered with an idiosyncratic hand that treats freshness as a starting point rather than the whole story. It was later re-released under the name Sunday Cologne, which tells you everything about its temperament.
The composition borrows from the classic cologne template, but the proportions of the notes are blended in an unusual way. Star anise and cardamom lead, a pairing you don't often see anchoring a fresh-spicy cologne. Lavender shows up, but it shares space with frankincense, which pulls the heart toward something smokier and more contemplative than a straightforward aromatic fougère. The base of vetiver, oakmoss, and patchouli grounds it, but doesn't bury the green sharpness above. The unusual choices make the cologne read like a quiet departure from the genre's usual scripts.
The evolution
The opening hits fast. Star anise is loud, almost liquorice-bright, with bergamot and cardamom cutting alongside. It smells like a cold morning walk, the kind where your coat smells faintly of someone else's cigarette from last night. The anise softens as the first twenty minutes pass, and lavender comes forward with incense riding alongside. That middle phase is where it stops being a fresh cologne and becomes something warmer, almost resinous, though never heavy. As the fragrance wears on, vetiver and oakmoss take the wheel, and patchouli hums underneath. What remains through the later hours is a close, woody-mossy skin scent, with the ghost of that original anise still detectable if you press your nose to your wrist. The composition rewards proximity over projection; it stays personal, which is, depending on your mood, either the whole point or the problem.
Cultural impact
Fantastic Man sits in conversation with Terre d'Hermès and classic Italian colognes, but wears closer, quieter, and more modern. The later re-release as Sunday Cologne signals a single scent living comfortably under more than one name, depending on the mood the buyer wants to name. It reads as a study of how a familiar genre template can be rearranged into something that feels like its own thing, swapping the usual bracing citrus opening for the warmer, spiced character of star anise and cardamom, then threading lavender and frankincense through the heart to give it a more contemplative posture.
The House
ByredoFounded in Stockholm by Ben Gorham, Byredo distills memory and emotion into minimalist fragrance. Each scent is a narrative — from the dusty roads of Jaipur to the anonymity of a crowded city. The house rejects the ornate traditions of European perfumery in favor of restrained Scandinavian design, letting raw materials speak with startling clarity.
The Creator
Ben GorhamClean composition defines Gorham's aesthetic. He favors simple arrangements of premium raw materials over complex, layered constructions.
