Private Beach Eau de Parfum Passionfruit Sandalwood 50ml

Five fruits open this fragrance at once, which is more than anything else in the range attempts. Passionfruit, peach, pear, raspberry and cassis together, with a thread of salt running underneath them. It should be chaos and it is not, because each one is doing a different job and the salt holds the whole thing to the ground.

• Five fruits at the top. Passionfruit leading, four more behind it.
• A saline thread. The salt note that stops it becoming a smoothie.
• Heliotrope in the base. Almond and vanilla in one material.
• Beach to dinner. It carries from an afternoon into an evening.

Why Five Fruits Work

Each of them sits at a different point on the scale from tart to sweet. Cassis and raspberry are sharp, pear is crisp and watery, peach is soft, and passionfruit is the loud one holding the middle of the range. Stacked together they read as a single complicated fruit rather than as five separate ones, which is the difficult part.

The Salt Underneath

A faint saline quality runs beneath the opening, and that is why the impression is a beach rather than a fruit bowl. Salt in perfumery does something no sweet material can: it suggests air, distance and skin, and it keeps a rich composition from feeling shut in. Without it the whole thing would be far more ordinary.

What Heliotrope Brings

Heliotrope carries almond, vanilla and powder all at once, which is why it turns up in so many comforting fragrances. Here it sits with musk, sandalwood and patchouli in the base and gives the finish a soft, creamy quality that keeps the fruit company long after the fruit itself has gone.

Sunscreen First, Then Scent

Sunscreen and fragrance do not get along: the film sits on the skin and changes how a scent releases, and some formulas turn a fruity opening genuinely strange. Apply sunscreen, wait until it has absorbed properly, then spray on a spot you have not covered. In summer this single order of operations solves most complaints about a fragrance behaving differently.

Questions About Private Beach

Is it a sweet fragrance? Fruity rather than sugary. The salt and the woods keep it from tipping over.

Does it really smell salty? Faintly, underneath the fruit, which is where the impression of open air comes from.

When should it be worn? Warm weather and afternoons, though it holds up into an evening.

What is heliotrope? A material that smells of almond, vanilla and powder together, sitting in the base.