Diva Eau de Parfum 100ml

Diva Eau de Parfum 100ml is built around tuberose and there is no sense pretending otherwise. The flower is the first thing you meet and it shapes everything that comes after it, so this is a bottle for someone who already knows they like that sort of presence rather than someone hoping to be eased into it.

Mandarin orange sits beside the tuberose at the opening and earns its place, giving the first few minutes a juicy brightness that stops the flower landing too heavily straight from the sprayer. That lift burns off inside a quarter of an hour. What follows is rose, full and a little jammy, with ylang ylang adding a creamy sweetness and daffodil cutting across both with a green, almost sappy edge. Iris runs underneath all of it, dry and cool and faintly chalky, and it is the reason the middle never turns syrupy. The last stretch is simpler and better for it. Sandalwood gives a soft, milky warmth and vanilla rounds the edges without reaching for sugar, so what is left on skin after several hours is quiet, smooth and worn close.

At eau de parfum strength one spray goes a long way and two is as much as anyone needs. Apply it generously and it will fill a room, which may or may not be the plan. Evenings suit it, so do colder months, and it is for the person who wears perfume as a statement rather than as a background. At 112.20 euro this is the dearest of the ways we list the 100ml bottle, so treat it as the unhurried choice rather than the thrifty one.

Emanuel Ungaro is a Paris house, opened in 1965 by the couturier whose name is on the bottle and settled on avenue Montaigne from 1967. Diva was its first fragrance, released in 1983, and it has anchored the line ever since, joined by La Diva in 2016 and the men's L'Homme in 2018. The perfumes are not produced by the fashion company, and the brand itself is owned by the investor Asim Abdullah.