Bond No. 9 Perfumes & Colognes

Twenty-eight bottles, every one of them Eau de Parfum. Almost all of them are named after a place in New York — and that is not decoration, it is the entire idea of the house.

A perfumer with an address for a name

Bond No. 9 was founded in New York in 2003 by Laurice Rahmé, and takes its name from 9 Bond Street in NoHo, the address it started from. Rahmé was born in Paris and had already spent a career in fragrance before this — senior roles at Lancôme, and building the American businesses of Annick Goutal and Creed, which is a neat piece of history given both houses now sit on this site.

The house was conceived in the period after September 11 as a response to the city itself: the premise was a scent for every New York neighbourhood. Two decades later the range still works that way, which is why this page reads more like a map than a catalogue.

The map

• Downtown — Tribeca, Wall Street, FiDi, Chinatown, Little Italy, Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, Lafayette Street. The densest part of the range, and where the house is most confident.
• Midtown and uptown — Central Park, Sutton Place, Beekman Place, Riverside Drive, Chelsea Nights, Nomad.
• Out of the city — Queens, Hamptons, Jones Beach, Liberty Island, Island. The lighter, more open end.
• New York in general — Manhattan, My New York, New York Nights, New York Signature, New York Patchouli, New Bond St. and Scent of Peace.

Two sit outside the scheme: Chez Bond, and Bond Number One, which is the most expensive bottle we stock from any house.

Buying one

The bottles are part of what you are paying for — hand-decorated, heavy, and made to be kept rather than emptied and binned, which is why these turn up so often as gifts. If you want to know whether the house suits you before committing to one of the bigger names, Manhattan is the cheapest bottle on the page and the honest place to test that.

Everything here is Eau de Parfum, so expect it to last. This is the other luxury house we stock in depth alongside Creed; if you are shopping the bracket rather than the name, compare the two. Our guide to the best Bond No. 9 fragrances goes through the range bottle by bottle, and all of it is listed under men’s cologne too.