Let it Ride

The King of American cool is back with a new fragrance, John Varvatos Dark Rebel Rider ($110 for 125ml), a heady scent with a rich base of leather and wood. Varvatos spoke to us about the inspiration behind the brand’s latest signature scent.

What was the inspiration for Dark Rebel Rider?

I work with perfumist Rodrigo Flores-roux, whom I’ve worked with on every one of the fragrances, and we talked about doing something much more aggressive than we’ve ever done. Something much more badass. Something that shakes shit up a bit. It isn’t just the same formula that everybody follows — really fresh or really musky — we wanted to do something completely opposed to that, something rebellious and tough.

What is the biggest change you’ve noticed since you entered the fragrance world?

When I first launched, there were probably about 500 new launches a year. Today, there are, like, a thousand. So you have the whole celebrity fragrance thing, everybody puts their name on a fragrance, and that’s why we’re so particular on how we do them, when do we do them, why do we do them. That’s why the scent and the packaging has to be incredible, because you need to say something different.

Fragrance is often tied to memory — is there one that stands out for you?

For the first John Varvatos fragrance, there was something about my grandfather’s bedroom that I always remembered. We worked for a while to capture that because it was always intriguing, walking into my grandfather’s bedroom and there was some kind of scent in there that was really exotic and intriguing and smoky to me.