Le Male Elixir Eau de Parfum Gift Set

The eau de parfum is the easier of the two strengths to live with, and the Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male Elixir Eau de Parfum Gift Set is the box to choose for someone who wants the scent without the full weight of it.

What is in it is short and deliberate. Lavender takes the opening, used cool and clean with that medicinal snap which has always read as barbershop rather than herb garden. Tonka bean arrives beneath it and stays for the duration, sweet in a dry, dusty manner with a bitter thread at the very back. Benzoin is the last material, a resin with balsamic warmth, smooth and lightly smoky, and it gives the base its golden thickness. Three materials, so there is no mystery to unpick: the pleasure is in how cleanly they are set against one another.

Eau de parfum strength here means good longevity with more room to breathe than the heaviest version has. Two sprays sits comfortably in company and will see out an evening, and it does not take over a car or a small restaurant. Longevity runs to most of a day, which is more than enough for the way most men use fragrance. Cold months suit it, and so do evenings, but it is wearable in daytime in a way a denser concentration is not. As a gift it is a good fit for a man who likes warm, clean smelling fragrance and dislikes anything sour or spiky, and the set spares you the job of wrapping it. It is also the easier box to give to a man who has never worn anything this heavy, because the lighter concentration forgives a generous hand.

Gaultier is a Paris house. Womenswear came first, shown in 1976, then a boutique of his own in 1984 and fragrance in 1993. Puig, majority owner from 2011, brought the perfumes fully in house in 2016.