Femme Eau de Toilette Gift Set

The Angel Schlesser Femme Eau de Toilette Gift Set is the one to choose when you want to give something detailed rather than simple, because this is a thirteen material composition and it shows.

The opening is a citrus and berry mixture: citron is sharp and bitter, bergamot and grapefruit broaden it, and raspberry adds a tart fruit sweetness that keeps the whole thing from being merely zesty. The middle is a full bouquet. Jasmine and gardenia bring richness, the gardenia creamy and slightly green, orange blossom lifts them with a clean brightness, and iris runs underneath with a dry, powdery coolness that gives the flowers some structure. The base is unusually long and quite inventive: licorice adds a dark, sweet, faintly bitter edge that you rarely find here, vanilla and amber supply warmth, cedarwood adds dryness, and musk softens everything against the skin. Licorice in the base is the detail that makes it memorable, and it is not a material many houses would risk there.

Thirteen materials make for a fragrance that keeps changing for the first hour or two, which is a pleasure if you like following a scent rather than simply wearing one. Presented as a set it suits a woman who takes fragrance seriously, and it is a better present than a single bottle if you want the gift to look like an occasion. Presented boxed. It also suits being given as a set rather than alone, because there is enough in it to explore.

Angel Schlesser works from Madrid and is known in Spanish fashion for restraint and a minimal line. The label is a founder member of the ACME designers' association and has shown at Madrid's Pasarela Cibeles since 1988, with its fragrances dating from 1999. The restraint of the clothes is not the restraint of the fragrances, which are a good deal busier.