Dylan Blue Pour Femme Eau de Parfum Gift Set

Two perfumers worked on the Versace Dylan Blue Pour Femme Eau de Parfum Gift Set, Calice Becker and Natalie Gracia-Cetto, and the composition has the finish you would expect from that.

It opens tart and green. Blackcurrant gives a dark, slightly sour fruit depth, green apple snaps across it, and then come two unusual choices. Clover is grassy and soft in texture without being sweet, and forget me not is thin, cool and barely there, which sounds like a weakness and works as a kind of air in the middle of the fruit. The heart is more conventional and all the better for it. Rose is clean rather than jammy, jasmine adds its rich white floral weight, and peach softens both with a downy sweetness that keeps the flowers from turning formal. The base is the part that lasts: styrax is resinous and faintly smoky, patchouli brings earth and depth, and musk smooths the two into something that stays close to the skin for hours. Ten materials, and the shape is clear from one end to the other. Nothing in it is difficult, and nothing in it is dull either.

At eau de parfum strength that bottom end is well represented, so expect a full day from it. It suits evenings and cooler weather better than high summer, and it reads grown up rather than girlish, which makes it an easier buy for a woman in her thirties or beyond. Two sprays will carry an evening, and a third will carry the coat you were wearing for a week afterwards. As a gift set it is a considered present for someone who already knows what she likes and will recognise the name on the box.

An Italian house. It opened in Milan in 1978, Gianni Versace was its founder, and his sister Donatella has had it since he died, with fashion, interiors, hotels and perfume all part of the business.