Tommy
Tommy Eau de Toilette, from Tommy Hilfiger, is the scent that opened the label's fragrance business in 1995, and it has stayed on shelves because it does something simple extremely well.
Lavender is the whole of the opening and it is handled clean and faintly soapy rather than herbal or medicinal. This is the lavender of a pressed shirt rather than of a garden border, and that impression of fresh laundry is most of why the bottle sold the way it did.
Apple and cinnamon follow and give it the shape people remember. The apple is crisp and a little tart, nowhere near candy, and the cinnamon is dry bark rather than bakery sugar, so the two together land closer to a cold morning in October than to a dessert. It is an obvious pairing, but the restraint in the sweetness is what keeps it wearable thirty years on.
The base is where it earns its keep. Patchouli brings an earthy, slightly damp depth, spruce adds a cool green resin that keeps the whole thing outdoors, and driftwood puts a pale salt bleached dryness underneath. Six materials in total, so there is no long evolution to follow: what you smell at ten minutes is broadly what you have for the rest of the wear, and plenty of people prefer a scent that behaves that predictably. In wear it is moderate on both counts, noticeable for an hour or so and then sitting quietly on the skin, and it is cheap enough to spray without doing arithmetic. It suits weekends, the school run, students, and anyone who would rather smell tidy than announced.
The house behind it set up in New York in 1985 with one menswear collection to its name, and it now sits under PVH, which took ownership in 2010. Fragrance is produced under an Estee Lauder Companies licence through the firm's Aramis division.
Please note: images are a guide only. Packaging and bottle design may occasionally differ from those shown due to manufacturer updates or promotions.
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