Gentleman Society Gift Set

The Givenchy Gentleman Society Gift Set is the simplest way to give this fragrance rather than choose a bottle size for somebody else, and it comes boxed for the occasion.

Karine Dubreuil-Sereni and Maïa Lernout built the scent, and its character comes from an unusual flower. Sage opens with a dusty, savoury herbal dryness and cardamom lifts it with a cool green spice that reads almost citrus like. Daffodil is the heart and it is a rare thing to find in a men's fragrance: green, slightly bitter, with a faint hay sweetness that sits somewhere between a flower and a stem. Vetiver runs alongside it, dry and rooty. Then the base settles things, cedarwood clean and sharp, sandalwood creamy and soft, vanilla rounding the whole composition without making it sweet.

Seven materials, balanced so that nothing dominates, which is what makes it an easy fragrance to give to a man whose taste you do not know in detail. It is comfortable at work, at a dinner and in most weather, with a dry finish that suits warmer months better than a heavier composition would, and it lasts seven hours or so with projection that stays civil throughout.

Boxed sets like this one are bought mainly for birthdays, Father's Day and Christmas, and the presentation saves you the job of wrapping it. For someone already wearing the fragrance it also works as the obvious top up, and for someone who is not it is a gentler introduction than a heavy evening scent would be.

Givenchy opened in Paris in 1952 under Hubert de Givenchy and now belongs to LVMH, where the perfume house operates independently of the fashion side. The scent itself is a recent addition to a line the house has been building on for a long time, and it reads as modern rather than traditional.