Touch Eau de Toilette Gift Set

Tous Touch Eau de Toilette Gift Set is built the wrong way round, and that is what makes it interesting: the flowers are at the top and the fruit is at the bottom. Freesia opens it, peppery and clean, with lotus adding a watery coolness and lily of the valley a green, slightly soapy brightness. The heart deepens into richer flowers. Tiare is creamy and warm, the flower most people associate with sun and holidays. Osmanthus sits beside it doing something stranger, reading as soft fruit and velvet rather than as a petal. Jasmine pulls the pair of them back towards the floral. Then, where you would expect something dry and earthy, the base turns sweet. Raspberry and blueberry give it a jammy, slightly tart fruit sugar, almond adds a soft nuttiness, and vanilla smooths all three into something closer to a dessert than a drydown.

Sophie Labbé composed it from ten materials. The structure is unusual enough that it is worth trying before committing, but it is also why people who like it keep coming back. At eau de toilette strength it is sweet without being heavy, which matters a great deal here. It suits younger wearers, warm afternoons and evenings out. As a gift set it is presented and ready to hand over, and it is a good choice for someone who finds classical floral perfume dull. Worth knowing that the sweetness lives in the base rather than the opening, so the first ten minutes will not tell you whether you will like the last two hours.

Tous is a Spanish jewellery company whose base has always been Manresa, in Catalonia. Its own history begins in 1920, with Salvador Tous Blavi apprenticed in watchmaking and, alongside Teresa Ponsa, turning a repair workshop into the jewellery business the bear now stands for. From 2000 the company began producing fragrance.