Scandal Eau de Parfum Gift Set

Concentration is in the name for a reason: the Jean Paul Gaultier Scandal Eau de Parfum Gift Set carries the fuller strength version, and on a honey fragrance that matters more than it would on a light one.

Honey is the lead material and the whole identity of the scent. It is a dense, waxy, faintly sour honey rather than a clean sweet one, and at eau de parfum strength that waxiness has real body to it. Gardenia is the flower above, creamy and wide, and it keeps the honey from reading as raw. Patchouli is the ground beneath, earthy and bitter with a damp edge, and it stretches the whole thing out so that it lasts. Three materials only, and the strength of the concentration is what gives them their presence and their reach.

The perfumers were Fabrice Pellegrin, Daphné Bugey and Christophe Raynaud, and 2017 was the year of release. In practice that means a scent which is noticeable at first and then warm and close for hours afterwards, rather than one that fades out by lunchtime. Two sprays is enough and a heavy hand is counterproductive, because the material at the centre of it is sweet and sweetness magnifies on skin. A fragrance like this one punishes enthusiasm with the atomiser.

As a gift it suits the confident rather than the cautious, and it is built for cold evenings and for occasions with some occasion to them. Supplied boxed as a set, which makes it a straightforward thing to hand over and a reliable thing to receive.

Gaultier is a French house that came to perfume late, having shown womenswear in 1976 and opened a Paris boutique in 1984 before releasing a fragrance in 1993. Puig gained the majority in 2011 and brought the scents in house in 2016.