Scandal Eau de Parfum Gift Set

Reputation is the shortest argument for the Jean Paul Gaultier Scandal Eau de Parfum Gift Set: the fragrance inside it did a great deal to change what a sweet designer scent was allowed to smell like, and it has been widely copied in the years since.

The thing that did it was honey. Not honey as sugar, but honey as a material, thick and waxy with a sour, faintly animal underside that most houses would have sanded off before launch. Gardenia is wrapped around it, creamy and full, and it supplies the beauty the honey alone would not have had. Patchouli sits below both, earthy, damp and bitter, and it is the material that gives the fragrance its length and its slightly dirty finish. Three materials, which is a very short list for something this recognisable, and a good illustration of how little you need when the choices are right. Nothing in it is decorative.

Named on the composition are Christophe Raynaud, Daphné Bugey and Fabrice Pellegrin, and the scent has been sold since 2017. Eau de parfum strength means it lasts, so apply with a light hand and let it do the work in its own time. It is a cool weather and evening fragrance, feminine and assertive, and it has the useful quality of being recognised by people who do not otherwise follow perfume. The boxed set is the way to buy it for somebody else, and it is a strong choice for a recipient who likes a scent with an opinion of its own in it.

Gaultier came to perfume from fashion. He showed womenswear in 1976, opened his first Paris boutique in 1984 and put out a scent in 1993, since when the house has had a reputation for bottles as distinctive as the liquid inside them. Puig became majority owner in 2011.