Calvin Klein CK One

Few fragrances have changed the shape of a market as decisively as ck one did in 1994. Calvin Klein still describes it on its own site as the revolutionary first CK fragrance, sold on three words, purity, unity and sensuality, and designed for men and women to share. That was not how perfume was sold at the time, and the Steven Meisel campaign, shot in black and white with a young Kate Moss among a crowd of androgynous faces, made the argument better than any copywriter could. Alberto Morillas and Harry Fremont are commonly named as its authors, though Calvin Klein credits nobody.

The brand publishes a compact note list: bergamot, cardamom, pineapple and papaya at the top, jasmine, violet, rose and nutmeg in the middle, and musk and amber at the close, with what it calls a refreshing green tea signature running through. In wear it is brighter and stranger than its reputation as a clean scent suggests. The opening is a fizzy citrus with a genuinely tropical edge from the pineapple and papaya, cut immediately by green notes and cardamom so that it never turns fruity. The middle is a soapy, transparent floral, more the idea of jasmine and violet than the flowers themselves, held together by orris and nutmeg. Then it settles into the green tea, musk and cedar accord that thousands of fragrances have copied since.

It is a hot-weather fragrance and it is best used generously, which Calvin Klein itself recommends. A humid coastal summer suits it, and it remains one of the few scents nobody in an open-plan office will object to.

The honest part concerns age. Thirty years of production and successive restrictions on materials, oakmoss in particular, mean that current bottles are noticeably thinner and cleaner than 1990s ones, with less of the mossy, slightly bitter depth that gave the original its backbone. Calvin Klein has published no reformulation notice, but anyone comparing a new bottle with a vintage one will smell the difference. Longevity is modest, four to six hours in the eau de toilette, which fits a fragrance always meant to be reapplied freely rather than rationed.