CH Gift Set

Patchouli is the material that keeps the Carolina Herrera CH Gift Set from being a merely sweet fragrance, and anyone who dismisses this one as simple has not waited around for the base. Above that patchouli, the composition runs flowers and citrus in the traditional order of things. Bergamot and grapefruit open bright and faintly bitter for a few minutes. Bulgarian rose follows, deep, dark and full rather than fresh, with sambac jasmine giving it a heady, waxy sweetness that pushes the middle towards richness. Then praline arrives, toasted and sugary, the smell of caramelising nuts rather than of a finished pudding, and the patchouli grounds all of it with earth and a trace of damp.

The box holds the 100ml Eau de Toilette, a 100ml body lotion and a 10ml spray. Six materials, three stages, and the whole arc running from sharp to sweet to dusty is audible on skin inside the first hour of wear. No concentration is printed on the set, so expect the scent as the house makes it: long wearing, moderate in presence, and suited to cooler weather rather than to July.

It is a women's fragrance in the classic mould, which makes the boxed set a good present for somebody who has worn perfume for years and knows precisely what she likes. What it is not is a light, modern, transparent scent, and anyone shopping for that should be steered away from this box. Olivier Cresp and Rosendo Mateu composed it, and the fragrance has been on counters long enough to be a familiar thing rather than a novelty.

The house is the New York fashion label of Carolina Herrera, born in Venezuela, who presented a first collection in 1981. Puig has owned the scent licence since 1988 and took the fashion division in 1995.