I found "the hammer") But the rose isn't exactly the one you first come across as part of a men's fragrance. An elegant peppery green rose that comes across wet, a little abstract with the support of the spices (cumin, nutmeg) and absolutely fresh. I visited the Renault Technocentre with a colleague, and as we entered the entrance hall I blindly followed its shadow as I looked down and pulled out my business cards.

Well, I got another rose for her (note: I had no idea which notes this fragrance had, I didn't check it before or something! There seems to be a growing family of these gorgeous modern roses that defy conventions: Galop d’Hermès is another example.

Then Declaration d'un soir dries down into a spicy woody scent that is very similar to how the linear Jardin Mediterranee begins and ends. For this latest declaration I have selected ingredients that will set hearts racing and encourage men to make their own passionate declarations.

Final shot: The older couple embrace half naked on the beach in Capri, dousing each other with Declaration Le Soir.

It took me weeks to finally figure out that Déclaration d’un Soir reminds me of Eau d’Italie Paestum Rose (more on that later). Mme Laurent chose to do an evening/formal variation not in the usual way—say, by adding a ton of woody amber and tonka bean and bumping the concentration to Parfum—but through the addition of a gorgeous spiced rose, still sparklingly transparent: a figurative boutonnière for the wearer’s buttonhole, in the famous signature scarlet shade of the perfume’s house to boot. At the beginning of the 90s she met Jean-Paul Guerlain at a school party and asked him for an internship.