Kilian Love Don't Be Shy

Kilian Hennessy came to perfumery from a family that had spent two centuries in cognac, and when he founded his house in 2007 he built it on the assumption that a fragrance should be treated like a spirit: composed properly, bottled properly, and refilled rather than replaced. Love, don't be shy belongs to that first year and to The Narcotics, the collection built around addiction as a theme. Kilian Paris credits Calice Becker, and she remains named on the brand's own product page today. Estee Lauder acquired the house in 2016.

The published pyramid is neroli at the top, rose and honeysuckle in the heart, and marshmallow with cistus labdanum at the base. The house describes it as opening on tender orange blossom absolute, moving into juicy honeysuckle and plush rose softened by a marshmallow sugar accord, and closing on a warm amber. That undersells how sweet it is. The first minutes are genuinely floral, a bright bitter-green neroli with pink pepper and coriander sharpening it, but within a quarter of an hour the marshmallow arrives and takes over: soft, powdery, faintly burnt sugar, with the orange blossom now reading as the topping rather than the dish. Caramel and vanilla thicken the base, and a trace of animalic warmth underneath keeps it from being purely edible. It is a marshmallow perfume with excellent materials in it, which is a rarer thing than it sounds.

It is a cold-weather, close-quarters fragrance. A Cape winter evening suits it far better than daylight, and heat makes the sugar overwhelming. It is also polarising in a way worth knowing about in advance: people either find it irresistible or find it far too much, with very little middle ground.

Performance is six to eight hours with heavy projection early on, and one spray is usually enough. It has been widely compared with Ariana Grande's Cloud, which arrived eleven years later in the same sweet register from a far more mainstream house. Kilian sells refills for the bottle, and the house has also released Extreme, Eau Fraiche and Rose and Oud versions, which are distinct compositions.