Wood Pour Homme Eau de Toilette 100ml

Three named origins sit at the top of Dsquared2 Wood Pour Homme Eau de Toilette 100ml, and they set up a brighter, sunnier scent than the name would have you expect. Calabrian bergamot comes first, which is the standard against which other bergamot is measured, bitter and floral at once rather than simply sharp. Sicilian lemon is cleaner and more direct, the peel rather than the juice, and mandarin orange rounds the pair of them off with a softer sweetness. It is a generous opening and it lasts longer here than citrus usually manages.

The middle brings it down to earth. Violet leaf lays a cool green leafiness underneath, ginger adds a dry, fizzing heat without any sweetness attached, and cardamom brings its aromatic, slightly camphorous lift. Together they stop the top from simply evaporating into nothing and give the fragrance a spine for the second hour.

The base is just two materials and it is all the better for being spare. Vetiver is earthy, grassy and faintly smoky, and ambroxan supplies that warm, dry, mineral quality that clings to skin and fabric and keeps a light scent going far longer than it has any right to. At toilette strength this is a daytime fragrance, five hours or so with moderate reach, and it is at its best in spring and summer. The 100ml bottle is the one to buy if it becomes a daily habit, which it tends to, because this is an easy scent to wear and a difficult one to tire of.

Dsquared2 has been based in Italy since the Canadian born twins Dean and Dan Caten founded it in 1995, three years after they moved to Milan. The label started in menswear and made its reputation on denim, sportswear and North American references treated with deliberate excess. Its fragrances come from a licensee.