Fame Eau de Parfum Gift Set

The base is the reason to buy the Rabanne Fame Eau de Parfum Gift Set, and the base is sandalwood and vanilla.

That pairing is soft, creamy and sweet, and it is where the fragrance spends most of its time on skin. Everything above it is designed to delay the arrival of that warmth: mango, ripe and resinous, bergamot slicing through it with bitter citrus, then jasmine filling the middle and incense running dry and smoky against the flowers. Six materials and a clear direction of travel, from bright and strange at the start to comfortable and warm by the end of the evening.

Eau de parfum strength gives it both carry and longevity. The first hour is the loud part, after which it settles onto the skin and stays legible for many hours more, particularly on clothing. It is a cold weather fragrance before anything else, and a night one, and it does not need help from anything else in the room to register. In summer it can be worn, but it has to be worn sparingly or it turns heavy.

There is a sound argument for buying the set rather than the bottle on its own when the recipient is somebody who already owns and likes this: you are topping up a known quantity rather than gambling on a new one, which is the single most reliable way to buy perfume for another person. It is also the version to choose when the gift is going to somebody you see rarely, since there is no conversation required about what they might like. Dora Baghriche, Marie Salamagne, Alberto Morillas and Fabrice Pellegrin are the four perfumers named.

Rabanne is French and grew out of fashion. The designer's first collection was shown in 1966, the fragrance arm was created in 1968 by the Spanish group Puig, and Puig has owned the whole brand since 1987.