Original Pour Femme EDP 100ml

Ginger against pear is a sharper opening than most women's fragrances attempt, and it is what gives Lacoste Original Pour Femme Eau de Parfum its shape. Pear is soft, watery and sweet without being sugary, the kind of fruit note that smells cool and slightly translucent. Ginger is its opposite in every way: hot, dry, a little soapy, and it keeps biting long after the first few minutes have gone. Instead of blending, the two of them stay distinct, and the opening is the more interesting for it. Jasmine occupies the middle on its own, and it is used generously. Full, warm and faintly animal at the edges, it is the material that turns the fragrance from a fruit scent into something properly floral, and it bridges the cool top and the warm base entirely on its own. A less confident composition would have put two or three more flowers alongside it. Vanilla and amber close it out. Vanilla is handled smooth rather than powdery here, amber is resinous and warm underneath it, and together they give the last hours a soft, enveloping quality that sits very close to the skin. Five materials, arranged simply and clearly, with nothing in the list that needs explaining. At this strength it stays put for most of a day, keeping its projection modest once the first hour has gone. It is aimed at women, works better in autumn and spring than in the heat of summer, and is at home at a desk and at dinner alike. French, founded 1933, and known for a knitted polo shirt with a crocodile on it: that is Lacoste in a line. René Lacoste, the tennis champion, and André Gillier, the industrialist, started it, and the company says its first fragrance came in 1968.