Lime Basil & Mandarin Eau de Cologne

Jo Malone Lime Basil and Mandarin Eau de Cologne is the scent the house is known for above all others, and it has been in the range since 1999 without needing to be reinvented.

Lime opens it, sharp and rindy and genuinely bitter, with mandarin orange adding sweetness and bergamot a clean, slightly soapy brightness. It is a citrus opening of the proper sort, cut rather than candied, and it smells less like fruit juice than like the peel.

Then the odd part, and the reason it became famous. Basil arrives in the middle, herbal and green and unmistakably the leaf, with thyme beside it adding a drier, more medicinal bitterness. Running underneath those are lilac and iris, the lilac powdery and faintly sweet, the iris cool and almost rooty, and they keep the herbs from reading as a kitchen. The pairing of culinary herb with citrus was unusual for a mainstream scent at the time and it is still what makes this one recognisable within three seconds.

Vetiver and patchouli close it, both dry, both earthy, giving a cologne that would otherwise disappear something to hold on to. Jo Malone herself composed it, before she left the business in 2006. As a cologne it is light, three to four hours, best sprayed without caution and perfectly suited to layering. It reads unisex and it works in any weather, which is rare.

Jo Malone the business began with a Walton Street shop in Chelsea in October 1994, opened after years of hand made bath oils and scents. Its colognes are deliberately simple in name and idea and are sold to be layered, in cream and black packaging. The Estee Lauder Companies have owned the house since 1999 and the founder departed in 2006.