The Club Eau de Parfum Gift Set

Scalpers The Club Gift Set is the version of the fragrance to buy when you are buying it for somebody else, and the scent inside is the argument for it. Cocoa is the first thing you notice and the reason the opening does not read like anything else in the shop. It is dry and dusty rather than sweet, closer to unsweetened powder than to a dessert, and grapefruit cuts across it with a bitter pithy brightness while sage adds a grey, herbal rasp. The middle keeps that tension going. Lavender is clean and slightly medicinal, tobacco brings a dried leaf sweetness that is more pipe pouch than cigarette, and ginger warms the two of them without turning the whole thing edible.

Inside are the 125ml Eau de Parfum, a 15ml spray and a keychain. The base is where it settles into something adult. Ambergris gives that salty, skin close warmth that makes a scent feel expensive, vetiver is rooty and faintly bitter, and patchouli is earthy and a little damp. Nine materials, composed by Ane Ayo and Clement Gavarry, and the construction is tighter than the ingredient list suggests: every material is either lifting the cocoa or holding it down. As a present it solves the usual problem with gifting fragrance, which is that a bare bottle can look like an afterthought. The set is already presented, so it needs nothing from you beyond handing it over, and the scent is distinctive enough to feel chosen rather than defaulted to. It suits a man who has been wearing the same thing for years and will not buy himself a change, and it is at its best in cold weather and after dark.

Scalpers is a Seville label, founded in 2007, which built its name on suits, shirts and accessories and on the embroidered skull it put on them. Men's, women's and children's ranges followed, homeware arrived in 2021, and the fragrance side is handled under licence by Perfumes y Diseno.