Le Male Elixir Parfum Gift Set

A man who likes to smell clean and sweet at the same time is the person the Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male Elixir Parfum Gift Set is for, and that combination is narrower than it sounds. Lavender provides the clean half. It is handled coolly, with the medicinal, faintly soapy character that makes lavender read as grooming rather than as a flower, and it stops the scent from ever smelling like a dessert. Tonka bean provides the sweet half, dense and slightly floury, spreading low and slow instead of lifting off the skin. Benzoin is the material that reconciles them, a warm balsamic resin, smooth and lightly smoky in body, and it gives the base its weight and its gold. There are three materials and no more, which is why the scent stays this clear from first spray to last trace.

Parfum concentration is the heaviest offered, and in use that translates into endurance rather than loudness. It will outlast a long evening and still be on the shirt the next day, so restraint with the atomiser is sensible and a single spray often does the job. Longevity of this order is the point of buying a parfum at all, and it is why a set like this tends to be bought for somebody rather than tried on a whim. Winter, night and indoor occasions are its natural territory. As a present, the set suits a recipient who already knows he likes this kind of thing and would rather have the strongest version of it than another variation on a theme he has heard before.

Gaultier's house is French and came out of fashion: a womenswear collection in 1976, a first Paris boutique in 1984 and perfume from 1993 onward. Puig took majority control in 2011 and has run the fragrance side itself since 2016.