Bad Boy Eau de Toilette 50ml

Carolina Herrera Bad Boy Eau de Toilette 50ml is the half size bottle of a fragrance that sells on contrast, and at 50ml it is the version that goes in a wash bag rather than staying on a shelf. The contrast is between a dry start and a warm finish. Bergamot leads, briefly. Pink pepper and white pepper follow and dominate the first twenty minutes, prickly and scratchy respectively, and clary sage gives them a herbal, slightly bitter backing. Cedarwood runs under all of it, dry and splintery. Then tonka bean and cocoa arrive and change the subject entirely, the tonka warm and smooth, the cocoa bitter and a little chalky with it, and from there the fragrance becomes comfortable rather than sharp.

Being an eau de toilette it is the easier of the two concentrations to wear in warm weather and the harder of the two to overdo by accident. Five hours is typical, more than that in cold air, and it will still be on a collar the next morning. Seven materials and one clean turn between them, which is why it reads as confident rather than complicated. Nothing in it is hard to identify once you know what you are smelling for.

The smaller bottle is the sensible buy for travel, for a second bottle kept at work, or for a first bottle if you have only ever smelled this on somebody else. It is aimed at men, and it does its best work in autumn and winter evenings. Credit goes to Louise Turner and Quentin Bisch, and the fragrance is from 2019.

New York is where the house began, with a collection the Venezuelan born Carolina Herrera showed in 1981. Its fragrances have been licensed since 1988 to Puig, which bought the fashion arm in 1995.