Man Aqua Eau de Toilette

A short composition, and there is no sense pretending otherwise: Jimmy Choo Man Aqua Eau de Toilette records three materials in total, and what you smell in the first ten minutes is close to what you get an hour later. Grapefruit opens it, and grapefruit is the right choice for a scent built this plainly. It is bitter as much as it is sweet, with a rindy sharpness that reads clean rather than fruity, and it carries the whole top of the fragrance on its own. Geranium and clary sage do the rest. Geranium is the greener, slightly rosy and metallic one, and clary sage is herbal and a little hay like, with a bitterness that stops the grapefruit turning into squash.

That is the fragrance. There is no long evolution to follow and no third act. Some people want exactly this from a summer bottle and others will find it thin, so it is worth knowing in advance which of those you are. Three materials cannot hide behind one another. Julien Rasquinet and Paul Guerlain are credited with it and it dates from 2022. As an eau de toilette it is light on oil, which suits the materials: it is made for heat, for daytime and for the gym bag rather than for a long evening. Expect three or four hours and reapply without guilt. It is aimed at men and it is the most casual thing in the Man range. No base is recorded for it, and that is the honest explanation for why it goes quiet so soon. Nothing here was built to sit on skin through a working day.

The parent company is a 1996 London accessories label, originally a women's shoemaker, now selling handbags and shoes for men as well. Fragrance production is licensed to Inter Parfums, and Man and Urban Hero between them make up the men's half of the range.