This is the first time I’ve reviewed a brand rather than a single perfume, and it may be the last, but there’s a reason for that. The Library of Fragrance describes its products as ‘Simple. Subtle. Singular Scents. Each Day. Everywhere’, and I wouldn’t quibble with any of that, other than the word ‘subtle’, which not all of the fragrances can really claim to be.

There are over 300 scents to choose from in the full range, and most of them are based on a single idea, from Apple Pie to Wet Garden…

‘Made in Margate’ is not a phrase you often see on perfume bottles, which is one reason Haeckels has garnered plenty of attention. The brainchild of Dom Bridges, a graphic designer and film director who used to make commercials for the likes of Lucozade and Pot Noodles, it was launched in 2012 after he and his wife moved to washed-up-and-coming Kentish seaside town of Margate…

The latest addition to the Hermessences range, created by in-house perfumer Jean-Louis Ellena for Hermès and launched in 2014, Cuir d’Ange is, as its name suggests, a rather ethereal take on the smell of new leather – appropriately enough for a company that started out making riding tackle.

Inspired by a phrase in Jean le Bleu, a 1932 novel by Jean Giono – a kind of French Thomas Hardy – Ellena explains that, for…