Neroli Wellbeing Fragrant Water Gift Set

Orange flowers come in two forms in perfumery and the Roger & Gallet Neroli Wellbeing Fragrant Water Gift Set uses both of them, which is the quiet cleverness of it.

The box holds a 100ml perfumed water and a 200ml body lotion. Neroli is the distilled oil of the blossom and it smells bright, green and slightly bitter, with a clean metallic edge that keeps it from being sweet. Orange blossom is the richer reading of the same flower, honeyed and full, closer to the smell of a tree in bloom on a warm evening. Putting the two side by side gives the scent a range that a single orange flower material could not manage on its own, and it is why this reads as a composition rather than a simple splash.

Immortelle sits underneath. It is an odd one, a dry and faintly curried straw of a material, sweet in a burnt sugar sort of way, and it gives the base a warmth that stops the citrus flowers evaporating into nothing within the hour.

Fabrice Pellegrin composed it, and it is put together from three materials, a short composition that states its case immediately and then holds it. The fragrant water format is light by design, intended to be splashed rather than measured out, and it works on skin in hot weather where a heavier scent would turn cloying. Boxed as a set, it suits somebody who likes clean floral scent and wants to use it generously rather than sparingly. A bottle of this does not last long in a household that takes baths, and that is rather the point of it.

Two brothers in law founded Roger & Gallet in 1862, having first bought a cologne house that went back to 1806, and the company has worked in both soap and fragrance from that point on.