Byredo founder Ben Gorham talks about his latest scent and what turned him on to the power of smell

“I started playing basketball when I was eight or nine years old. I was still living in Sweden at the time, but when I turned 11, my family moved to Canada. Somehow along the way, I eventually finished high school in New York, and then later went back to play division one basketball in Canada.

Playing basketball was really the only thing I did. I barely studied, it was all about the sport. I played professionally in Italy, Germany and then Sweden.

However, my career didn’t pan out, because I needed a European passport to play and to sign my contracts with these teams. I wasn’t able to get one because I’m Canadian. So at the age of 25, I quit basketball and went to art school in Stockholm.

Although I no longer play professionally, I now lead a luxury perfume brand, so there’s some level of leadership that I have developed as an athlete. I was immensely competitive in basketball and I’m immensely competitive as an entrepreneur. It drives everything I do.

My dad left when I was really young, so it was really just my mother, my sister and I. Back then, I didn’t know if I was creative. My mother worked a lot to support the family and basketball was kind of an escape from reality.

Once I graduated from art school, I met a perfumer named Pierre Wulff, and that was where my passion for fragrances began. The first time I met Pierre, I clearly remember him telling me what he could do with smell. I was asking him, “Can you do this? Can you do that?” And I felt like there were a lot of creative possibilities. So I asked him to help me translate memories into smells and he agreed.