Pour Elle Eau de Parfum

Iris is the expensive heart of Carven Pour Elle Eau de Parfum, and the two perfumers credited on it, Emilie Coppermann and Pierre-Constantin Guéros, have built the rest of the fragrance to leave it room. The opening is herbal rather than fruity. Bergamot and lemon give the brightness, but clary sage is what makes it distinctive, a herb with a dry, slightly tea like, faintly musky smell that reads as grown up from the first second. It is a sharper and more serious start than most women's fragrances attempt.

Then the iris. Iris is rooty and cool rather than floral, closer to the smell of damp earth and old face powder than to a flower, and it is one of the most costly materials in perfumery for good reason. Mimosa sits beside it, soft and honeyed and slightly powdery, warming the iris without sweetening it, and lavender runs underneath, clean and herbal, tying the heart back to the sage in the opening.

The finish is restrained. Musk gives a soft skin like closeness, cedarwood adds a dry, sharpened pencil quality, and vetiver brings earth and a trace of smoke. Nothing in the base is sweet, which is unusual and is the reason the whole thing holds its shape rather than collapsing into warmth. At eau de parfum strength it wears quietly but persistently, staying fairly close after the first hour. It suits daytime, work and cooler months, and it is aimed at women who find most feminine fragrance too sweet by half. Anyone who already knows they like iris will recognise within a minute what this is doing.

Carven is a Paris house opened in 1945 by the couturier Carmen de Tommaso, known in the trade as Marie-Louise Carven, who died in 2015 aged one hundred and five. Perfume arrived in 1946 and the line was revived in 2013.