Versace Eros is the house’s men’s eau de toilette from 2012, the turquoise bottle with the Medusa head. 

Mint, Italian lemon and green apple open it. The heart is tonka beans, geranium and ambroxan. Vanilla, vetiver, cedar and oakmoss sit in the base.

Look at the heart. Tonka and ambroxan are usually base materials, the slow, warm stuff that shows up hours later. Here they sit in the middle tier, so the sweetness and the warm, skin-like glow arrive much earlier than you would expect from a scent that opens on mint. Then the base adds vanilla on top of the tonka, which means there are two sweet notes in what is classed as an aromatic fragrance. So Eros reads louder and sweeter than most fresh scents. What stops it turning into dessert is the other half of the base. Oakmoss and vetiver are dry, earthy and a little bitter, and with geranium in the heart they give it the bones of a classic fougère. No oud, no leather, no heavy spice. Fresh on top, sweet in the middle, dry at the end.