Sunflowers Eau de Toilette 100ml

Few fragrances are as tied to their own decade as Elizabeth Arden Sunflowers Eau de Toilette 100ml, which arrived in 1993 and has been quietly selling ever since without ever pretending to be fashionable. David Apel composed it, and the structure is simple and sunny. Bergamot opens it clean and bright, melon follows with a cool, watery sweetness, peach adds soft fruit flesh, and osmanthus is the one that gives the opening its character, fruity with a dry, faintly bitter edge to it. That combination is why the top smells like warm weather rather than like citrus.

The middle is short and light. Jasmine provides a creamy white flower sweetness and cyclamen keeps it green and watery, so that the heart never becomes heavy at all. Then sandalwood and oakmoss finish it, one creamy and mild, the other earthy and a little damp, and together they give a scent that could have floated away a quiet grounding.

It is an eau de toilette and it behaves like one: three to four hours, light projection, best reapplied in the afternoon if you want it to see out a long day. That is not a flaw so much as the point of the thing. Nothing about it is heavy, and nothing about it was ever meant to be. Summer, holidays and genuinely hot days are where it works, and it reads young and feminine without ever being sugary. The 100ml bottle is the standard size and the sensible one for something you will spray liberally in July.

Elizabeth Arden grew out of a New York salon into an American beauty house spanning skincare, cosmetics and perfume. Its fragrances are not licensed out; Its fragrances are not licensed out, and Revlon took ownership in September 2016.