Marc Jacobs Daisy

Daisy launched in 2007 and did something designer perfumery rarely manages: it created a visual shorthand that outlived the trend it belonged to. The cap covered in white resin daisies is recognisable at a distance, and for a decade it was the fragrance teenagers were given and then kept buying in their twenties. Alberto Morillas, one of the most prolific perfumers of the modern era, is commonly named as its author; Marc Jacobs publishes no credit on the pages available for this write-up, which were blocked to automated access, so the notes below are drawn from independent databases rather than a house document.

That reading runs violet leaf, blood grapefruit and strawberry on top, violet, gardenia and jasmine in the heart, and musk, white woods and vanilla underneath. The opening is the clever part. Violet leaf is green and slightly metallic, and set against grapefruit it gives the fragrance an airy, almost ozonic lift rather than the sugary fruit opening you would expect from the bottle. The strawberry is a whisper, not a milkshake. Gardenia and violet then take the middle in a powdery, slightly retro direction, and the base is soft white musk with a dry woody edge and just enough vanilla to round it.

It is a daytime fragrance for warm weather and it works particularly well on people who dislike heavy perfume, which is a real category and badly served elsewhere. Spring on the Highveld, when the air is dry and everything is in flower, is close to where it makes most sense.

The honest assessment is that Daisy is not strong. Four to six hours on skin as an eau de toilette, low to moderate projection, and it fades to a skin scent inside two hours on most people. It has also been on the market for nearly twenty years, and people who have worn it throughout describe current bottles as softer and cleaner than the earliest, which is typical of a fragrance this old and this widely distributed; Marc Jacobs has announced nothing. The family has grown enormously, and Daisy Eau So Fresh, Daisy Love, Daisy Eau So Intense and Daisy Wild are separate fragrances, not concentrations of this one.