Irresistible Eau de Toilette

If the eau de parfum is the one everybody knows, Givenchy Irresistible Eau de Toilette is the quieter relation in the same range, and for a good many people it turns out to be the more useful of the two bottles.

The difference announces itself immediately. Blackcurrant bud stands in for the fruit of the stronger version, and it is a sharper, greener, almost sappy material, far more leaf than berry, with a bitterness that wakes the whole opening up. White tea runs underneath, pale and slightly astringent in the way a cup left to brew too long is, and between the two of them the first ten minutes read cool rather than sweet. Rose and iris then take the centre, the pairing this entire family is built around, rose providing the shape and iris the dry powder that keeps it from going soft and pretty. Cedarwood and white musk finish the job, the wood clean and pencil dry, the musk smoothing everything into a soft laundered trail that sits very close to the skin.

Toilette strength means less oil and a lighter hand, so expect four or five hours rather than a full day, and do not be mean with the atomiser. That lightness is the entire point of the thing. This is the bottle for August, for an office where people sit shoulder to shoulder, and for days when a heavier spray would feel like hard work before lunchtime. It is also the gentlest way to find out whether the Irresistible accord suits you at all, before committing to one of the richer versions.

It reads as a women's fragrance and it belongs to daylight. Givenchy has been a Paris fashion house since 1952, when Hubert de Givenchy opened it, and it now belongs to LVMH, where the fragrance business is run as a separate maison from the clothes. Irresistible is one of the two families that business is built on.