Azzaro Perfumes & Colognes

Two Azzaro fragrances are genuinely important, and the rest of the house is built around them — which makes this an unusually easy range to understand.

A Tunisian in Paris

Loris Azzaro was born in Tunisia to a Sicilian family and taught mathematics before he ever designed anything. He arrived in Paris in the 1960s, opened a boutique, and became the couturier that actresses and singers went to when they wanted a dress that would be photographed.

His fragrance house has stayed much closer to that scale than the fashion giants. It has never had a large range, and nearly everything descends from two releases separated by eighteen years.

The two that matter

Azzaro Pour Homme, from 1978, is the plain bottle simply labelled Azzaro. It is a lavender, anise and leather fragrance of a type that barely exists any more — the barbershop style, sharp and soapy and grown-up. If you want to know what men’s fragrance smelled like before the sweet era, it is one of the two or three bottles worth smelling, and it remains very affordable.

Chrome, from 1996, did the opposite. Clean, citrus, almost aggressively inoffensive, it helped define the fresh style that dominated the next twenty years. It comes as an Eau de Toilette, an Eau de Parfum and as Chrome Legend.

Smell those two next to each other and you have the entire shift in men’s perfumery between 1978 and 1996 in two bottles.

Wanted, which is the modern house

Everything released since sits under the Wanted name: the Eau de Toilette and Eau de Parfum, Wanted by Night, The Most Wanted in several concentrations and Forever Wanted Elixir. These are warm, sweet and spiced — the current commercial style rather than the house’s older one. The Most Wanted is the one to try first; by Night is the heaviest.

On the women’s side, Wanted Girl is a warm, sweet floral with ginger, orange blossom and dulce de leche, and Wanted Girl Tonic is its lighter, zestier reading.

Which end to shop

Azzaro really has two halves, and they do not overlap. If you want something modern and noticeable, start with Wanted. If you want something classic and quiet, start with the 1978 original, and be aware it will smell old-fashioned to anyone under thirty — which is rather the point.

For more of the classic style, Dior keeps Fahrenheit in production and Yves Saint Laurent still makes Kouros. Azzaro’s fragrances for men are under men’s cologne, and those for women under women’s perfume.