Scandal Gift Set

Somebody who already wears this one is the easiest person to buy the Jean Paul Gaultier Scandal Gift Set for, and the second easiest is somebody who has sniffed it in a shop and not yet committed.

The reason is that there is nothing ambiguous about the scent. Honey runs through all of it, thick and golden with a faintly sour, waxy quality that keeps it from being merely sweet. Gardenia gives it body, a wide, creamy flower note that fills out the middle and takes the rawness off the honey. Patchouli is the dark end, earthy and slightly bitter, and it is the material that holds the other two down and makes the trail last. Nothing else is in it, and on the evidence nothing else needs to be.

Christophe Raynaud, Fabrice Pellegrin and Daphné Bugey share the credit. The fragrance first appeared in 2017. On skin it is warm and quite insistent for the first hour, then draws in close without thinning out much. That makes it a better choice for evenings, for autumn and winter, and for occasions where being remembered is part of the point. It is a feminine scent and not remotely a shy one, so it suits a recipient with some confidence about her, and it is wasted on anybody who would rather blend quietly into a room and leave it the same way. A set takes the guesswork out of presentation and is the neater way to buy for a birthday or Christmas, particularly for someone already a bottle deep and unlikely to want anything else.

The house was founded in fashion rather than in perfumery: a first womenswear collection in 1976, a Paris boutique in 1984, and fragrance only from 1993. Puig became the majority shareholder in 2011 and has produced the scents itself since 2016.