Jean Paul Gaultier "Gaultier 2"

You have to give them credit for a snazzy sales campaign. The back of the bottle is magnetised, you see, which has made it possible to affix these giant metal plates onto the arms of the salesgirls in a holster-like fashion. They shoot you, then make a big show of putting the bottle against the magnetic holster, where it produces a satisfying "click". As our jaded, beholstered salesgirl deadpanned, "It's the best part".

For all I can tell, this one's unisex. The weird thing is, there are two very distinct, almost parallel scents at work here, and they come together at the end in the same complimentary fragrance. It's a neat trick.

The first hit is of baby powder and tobacco, then an old leather armchair, an attic that smells of mothballs and lemon. The strangest thing in all of this is that the scents really do balance -- the sweetness of the feminine baby powder with the masculine tobacco, then the muskiness of the male leather and the female attic lemon. The finish is a lingering sensation of a thicket of sun-baked flowers on an otherwise deserted, windy, salty beach: again, unexpectedly complimentary. This is the first perfume I've tested that hasn't bothered to find the middle ground from the start in a unisex fragrance; it keeps the male and female scents running alongside each other until they meet at the seashore. I can only assume that the floral is more pronounced on a woman, the marine more pronounced on a man. Fascinating.

Verdict: Intriguing. Could be good for work, for socialising, or just for puzzling over. Definitely worth consideration, though.