Allure Homme

Chanel released Allure Homme in 1999, three years after the women's Allure, and it has outlasted almost every men's launch of its era. It arrived during Jacques Polge's long run as the house's in-house perfumer, a tenure that lasted from 1978 until 2015, and it is generally attributed to him, though Chanel does not print perfumer credits on its bottles. What it did was unusual for the moment: instead of chasing the marine freshness that dominated the late nineties, it built a warm, faintly sweet woody-spicy accord and made it wearable in daylight.

Chanel's own account of the composition is short. Bergamot at the opening, vetiver at the heart, Venezuelan tonka bean and cistus labdanum in the base, lifted by black pepper from Madagascar. On skin it reads richer than that list suggests. The first ten minutes are bright and a little fizzy, lemon and mandarin over a ginger note that gives the opening its snap. Within half an hour the citrus recedes and a soft, powdery warmth takes over: pepper and cedar leaning on tonka and vanilla, with a creamy edge that many wearers read as coconut. The drydown is where it earns its reputation, sandalwood and amber with a whisper of leather, close to the skin but stubborn.

It suits a man who does not want to announce himself. An office, a long lunch, a dinner that runs late. It is comfortable rather than commanding, which is precisely why it has kept selling for more than twenty-five years. Through a Highveld winter it warms up beautifully; in peak summer humidity it can turn thick if you overspray, so three sprays is usually the ceiling.

Performance is good without being extreme. Expect six to eight hours from the eau de toilette, with real projection for the first two and a skin-level trail after that. Chanel has reworked it over the years as it has most of its back catalogue, and current bottles run a little cleaner and less mossy than the earliest ones, but the shape of the fragrance is intact. The house still sells it alongside a full body range and two separate offshoots of its own, Allure Homme Sport and Allure Homme Edition Blanche, each with its own line.