For Her Gift Set

Very few fragrances cross generations the way this one does, and Narciso Rodriguez For Her Gift Set can be given to a woman of twenty or of sixty without much risk either way.

The set runs to the 100ml Eau de Parfum, a 50ml body lotion and a 10ml spray. The reason is the material at its core. Musk, used here as the main event rather than as a base, is warm and clean with a powdery softness, and it has no particular age attached to it. Peach gives the opening a ripe, gentle fruit quality, rose adds fresh petal brightness, and below the musk sit patchouli, earthy and a touch damp, and amber, resinous and warm. Nothing in the five is unusual on its own; the arrangement is what people recognise.

It is a five material composition and it does not change much as it wears. That consistency is why people stay with it for years rather than trying it once, and it is also why a set makes sense as a gift: it is not a fragrance anybody needs to grow into. A gift that needs no instructions is worth more than a clever one, and this sits firmly in the first category.

In wear it is long lasting and close rather than loud. A couple of sprays carry a full day, with traces left on wool afterwards. Cold weather suits it best, but it is worn in summer too, where the fruit shows up more clearly than the base. The musk is the part that lingers, and it lingers politely.

Christine Nagel and Francis Kurkdjian are the names behind the formula. The American label was founded in 1997 by a designer raised in Newark by Cuban immigrant parents. He studied at Parsons, worked under Donna Karan at Anne Klein and then at Calvin Klein, held the womenswear design directorship at Loewe from 1997 to 2001, and opened his own New York atelier in 2001.