Tom Ford Electric Cherry

Lost Cherry did something in 2018 that almost nothing else in mainstream perfumery had managed, which was to make cherry a serious note rather than a joke. A small family has grown around it since, and the Cherry Collection now runs Lost Cherry, Cherry Smoke and this one. Electric Cherry is the daylight version. The house sums it up in a single line, an effervescent floral fruity scent of cherry, white florals and musk, and that is a fair account of a fragrance which fizzes rather than smoulders.

Tom Ford's own listing is unusually specific about materials. Morello cherry sits at the centre, tarter and sharper than the maraschino-and-almond cherry of Lost Cherry, and it is lifted by Shimoga ginger, which supplies the crackle the name promises. A pistachio accord gives it a green, faintly salty, nutty edge that keeps it from reading as confectionery. Jasmine sambac absolute forms the floral heart, and it is a proper indolic jasmine rather than a scrubbed clean one, which is what gives the composition its adult streak. Underneath, a sandalwood accord and ambrettolide, a large musk molecule with a slightly fruity, skin-like character, carry the drydown, so the last few hours smell less like fruit and more like warm clean skin with cherry somewhere in the memory.

It is a very good hot-weather fragrance, and it is one of the rare fruity scents men wear as readily as women. On a Highveld December afternoon the ginger and the musk hold up where a heavier gourmand would turn cloying. It also works as an evening scent in the first hours of a night out, when brightness is the whole point.

Honestly assessed, longevity is the weak spot relative to what it costs. Six to seven hours is a realistic expectation, with the first two hours doing most of the projecting and the musk and sandalwood base staying close to the skin after that. That is the trade-off in a composition built for effervescence: the materials that make it sparkle are the ones that leave first. Test it on skin over a full afternoon before committing to a large bottle.