Scandal Gift Set

Buying fragrance for somebody else is hard to get right, and the Jean Paul Gaultier Scandal Gift Set makes it easier by being built around a scent people either already wear or have been meaning to try.

The set runs to the 80ml Eau de Parfum, a 75ml body lotion and a 10ml spray. Scandal is honey first, and that is what makes it recognisable rather than merely pleasant. The honey is rich and a little raw, sweet without being clean, with the waxy quality real honey has and most sweet perfumes do not. Gardenia is laid over it to give a full, creamy flower character that keeps the sweetness lush instead of sugary, and it is the material that makes the fragrance beautiful rather than just loud. Patchouli underneath turns the whole thing earthy and slightly bitter, and that is the part which makes it read as a grown up fragrance rather than a sweet one. Three materials, no filler, which is rarer than it sounds at this end of the market.

The composition is credited to Daphné Bugey, Fabrice Pellegrin and Christophe Raynaud, and the scent has been on sale since 2017. As a present it works best for someone who likes to be noticed. By temperament it belongs to cold weather and to the evening, warm and close to the skin once the first hour has passed, so it makes more sense as a Christmas or birthday gift than a holiday one. It arrives boxed and ready to hand over, which saves a trip out for paper and ribbon, and it looks like a considered choice rather than a bottle picked up on the way home from work.

The house behind it is French. A first womenswear collection was shown in 1976, a shop of Gaultier's own followed in Paris during 1984, and scent began in 1993. Control passed to Puig in 2011, and the perfumes have been made internally since 2016.