Geranium

Jovoy

Bergamot opens briefly — barely enough to register before the patchouli-amber-labdanum heart asserts itself with full confidence.

Hermès

Terre d'Hermès Eau Intense Vétiver is Christine Nagel's 2018 recentering of the Hermès earth trilogy around a single ingredient.

Cerruti

Cerruti 1881 pour Femme is an exercise in floral layering at a scale that was common in 1995 and is rare now.

Penhaligon'S

Omniscient Mr Thompson opens with a soft billow of lavender and elemi resin — the kind of scent that conjures a well-lined library, papers stacked with purpose.

Penhaligon'S

Omniscient Mr Thompson opens with a soft billow of lavender and elemi resin — the kind of scent that conjures a well-lined library, papers stacked with purpose.

Jesus del Pozo

In 1994, Christopher Sheldrake — who would later become Chanel's exclusive perfumer — designed Quasar for the Spanish house Jesus del Pozo.

Laurent Mazzone Parfums

Patchouli Bohème opens with a brief woody-green preface — geranium's slightly minty, rose-adjacent freshness alongside a general woodiness that signals this is not a sweet or floral composition.

Les Liquides Imaginaires

Louise Turner constructs Beauté du Diable around the eugenol molecule — the compound that links clove and carnation in their shared spicy warmth.

Antonio Puig

Alberto Morillas, Harry Fremont, and Rosendo Mateu collaborate on Aqua Quorum, a 1994 aromatic fougère that handles the fresh-aquatic genre of its era with more formal structure than most contemporaries.

Jo Malone London

Orris & Sandalwood begins with the unexpected sharpness of galbanum — a green, resinous note that immediately distinguishes this from the house's lighter output — softened by violet bloom.

Widian

Liwa — named for the vast oasis at the edge of Abu Dhabi's Empty Quarter — is one of Widian's most architecturally complex compositions.

Giorgio Armani

Stronger With You Only is the lightest and most casual entry in Armani's SWY franchise.

Armaf

Rose, geranium, and citrus open with a dry floral-herbal freshness — the geranium medicinal and green, rose providing warmth, citrus adding lift before the transition to the heart makes its intentions clear.

Avon

Black Suede is a product of its era — a 1980 leather chypre built on the structural confidence of high-oakmoss architecture and a spice-and-leather core that asks full commitment of its wearer.

Diptyque

Diptyque's founding fragrance, created in 1968 by artist Desmond Knox-Leet, was inspired by an old English recipe combining rose, geranium, and cloves.

Lacoste Fragrances

Sophie Labbé's Match Point opens with the clean sports-fragrance classic: grapefruit, pink pepper, and basil — the citrus providing snap, the pepper adding edge, and the basil grounding it with herbal greenness rather than kitchen associations.

Trump

Against expectations, a genuinely well-constructed mainstream masculine.