Le Male Gift Set

Few men's fragrances are as safe to give as the one inside the Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male Gift Set, because almost everybody has already met it.

Inside are the 125ml Eau de Toilette, a 75ml aftershave balm and a 75g deodorant stick. Three materials do all the work. Mint opens cold and clean, a bracing green chill that lasts a few minutes and sets up everything after it. Lavender is the body of the scent, herbal and calm, carrying the smell of shaving soap and hot towels more than of a flower in a field. Vanilla is underneath from early on, rounded and sweet, staying close to the skin and softening the herbal edge until the whole thing feels warm rather than sharp. That cold and sweet pairing is unusual, and it is why this smells like nothing that came before it.

It is a short composition, three materials held in balance rather than a long unfolding. Nothing is hidden and nothing arrives late, and the balance between the cold top and the sweet base barely shifts across a whole evening.

As a set it covers a lot of recipients: the man who has worn it for years, the teenager being bought a first proper fragrance, the father in law who is impossible. It is worn mostly at night and mostly in cooler months, though it is common enough year round, and it has enough strength that a couple of sprays will do. The boxed format takes the guesswork out of it, which is the main reason sets like this sell at Christmas, and it is a sound choice for a man who would never buy fragrance for himself.

Jean Paul Gaultier is a French fashion house whose founder put on a first womenswear show in 1976 and had opened a Paris boutique by 1984. He began making perfume in 1993. Puig acquired a majority holding in 2011 and brought the fragrances fully in house in 2016.