Byredo

About the house

Byredo was founded in Stockholm in 2006 by Ben Gorham, and the name is described as a portmanteau of "by redolence". Gorham had no training in perfumery. He began as a professional basketball player, went to art school, and came to fragrance after a chance meeting with the Swedish perfumer Pierre Wulff.

In a 2015 interview he said scent started as an idea during his art school years, and that it was after he graduated that perfume became "the carrier, the product". Rather than composing the fragrances himself, he worked with outside perfumers. Another magazine names Olivia Giacobetti and Jérôme Epinette among the noses behind the house's scents.

The brand's first handbags and other accessories appeared at the 2017 Paris Fashion Week. Two years earlier, in 2015, Byredo had opened its second store, in New York's SoHo.

Ownership changed twice. One account has Gorham selling a majority stake to the London investment firm Manzanita Capital in 2013. In May 2022 the Spanish group Puig bought a majority stake, and Gorham stayed on as chief creative officer and shareholder alongside Manzanita.

That arrangement came with a transition plan. Gorham left Byredo at the end of June 2025, about nineteen years after he founded it.