Bliss Eau de Toilette

Halloween Bliss Eau de Toilette is the lightest and friendliest thing the line produces, and it is aimed squarely at daylight. Pear leads the opening with a cool, crisp juiciness, yellow mandarin adds a soft sweet citrus beside it, and bergamot sharpens the pair with a cleaner, more bitter edge. It is a bright start and it does not outstay its welcome, handing over within fifteen minutes.

The middle is three white and pink flowers handled gently. Peony is cool and watery with a green stem quality, lily of the valley is clean, dewy and slightly soapy in the way that material always is, and jasmine supplies the only real richness, keeping the heart from being too polite. Nothing is pushed hard, which is why it reads as pretty rather than heady.

The ending is two materials and it is deliberately quiet. Musk keeps the flowers soft and close to the skin, and oakmoss puts a dry, faintly bitter earthiness underneath so the composition has a floor. Eight materials in total, so the whole structure is easy to follow from first spray to last trace.

Christophe Raynaud and Jordi Fernández composed it. At eau de toilette strength expect four or five hours and modest projection, which is exactly right for an office, a classroom or a warm afternoon. It is a women's fragrance and it leans young, though there is nothing in it that an older wearer would find awkward.

The Halloween name belongs to a Spanish fragrance line created for the Madrid couturier Jesus del Pozo, who opened a first shop in 1974 and died in 2011. The scents are made by Perfumes y Diseno, which began producing his fragrances in 1992 and eventually bought the fashion company outright.