Burberry My Burberry

My Burberry launched in 2014 as the fragrance for Christopher Bailey's Burberry, the period when the house had been pulled back from licensing chaos into something coherent and when the trench coat was again at the centre of everything it did. Burberry credited Francis Kurkdjian with the composition, and Bailey worked with him on it directly. The brief was a London garden after rain, and the bottle is finished with a knotted gabardine trench-coat belt, hand-tied. It is a rare case of a fashion fragrance whose concept and packaging genuinely agree with each other.

Kurkdjian built it as a fresh floral with a wet green quality running all the way through. Sweet pea is the signature note and it is an unusual one: soft, slightly honeyed, a little green, and not a material many commercial fragrances are willing to lead with. It sits over bergamot, mandarin, grapefruit and lemon, which give the opening its brightness. The heart adds quince and peach for a wet-fruit juiciness, freesia and gardenia for floral body, geranium for a green rosy edge, and a set of green notes that carry the after-rain idea. Underneath, damask rose, patchouli, violet, leather and musk make a base that is soft rather than heavy, with just enough leather to nod at the trench.

It is a spring and early-summer fragrance far more than a winter one. Cape Town in October, or a Highveld morning after an overnight thunderstorm, is close to its natural habitat. It reads polished and mildly formal, and it works for daytime and office wear where something sweeter would not.

On performance, be realistic. This is a light, transparent floral and it behaves accordingly. Five to seven hours on skin is normal, with modest projection after the opening hour and a soft musky rose drydown. It is at its best reapplied once in the afternoon. Burberry has released several variations under the My Burberry name over the years and they differ substantially from one another, so the original eau de parfum is the one described here.