Nina Gift Set

First fragrances are hard to buy for other people, and the Nina Gift Set, from Nina Ricci, is one of the more reliable answers: sweet, clean, uncomplicated and almost impossible to dislike.

The box holds the 80ml Eau de Toilette, a 75ml body lotion and a 10ml roll-on. Lemon and lime start it off, a bright and slightly bitter citrus pairing that fades quickly and is not missed. What takes over is toffee apple, a frankly sweet note with a tart edge still showing through, and gardenia, which adds a creamy white floral richness and stops the sweetness going flat. Cedarwood and white musk make up the base, the first dry, the second soft and clean, and between them they keep the fragrance tidy right through to the end of its wear. Six materials and a straightforward build, so there is no mystery about it. Four or five hours of wear is typical, with the loudest phase inside the first thirty minutes, and two sprays is the sensible dose for daytime. Sprayed on a scarf it will still be there the next morning, which is often how a scent like this gets remembered.

It reads feminine and youthful and belongs to mild weather, daylight and ordinary days rather than to long evenings out, where something with more depth would serve better. Christian Dussoulier, Jacques Cavallier Belletrud and Olivier Cresp are the perfumers behind it, and the house has kept the fragrance in its range long enough for it to be familiar to two generations of wearers. Nina Ricci opened in Paris in 1932, named after the Italian born couturiere, with her son Robert behind both the company and its move into fragrance, and the perfume department itself dates from 1941. Nina joined the range in 2006, and Puig has owned the house since 1998.