Versace Perfumes & Colognes

Twenty bottles, eleven under men’s and eight under women’s, and one name accounts for a third of the page. If you have come here for Eros, there are seven of them and they are not interchangeable.

Milan, and a house built on Greek myth

Gianni Versace opened in Milan in 1978, and where other Italian houses reached for restraint he reached for the classical world — the Medusa head, the Greek key border, gold on everything. After his death in 1997 his sister Donatella took over and kept the vocabulary intact.

It runs straight through the fragrances. Eros is the Greek god of desire. Vanitas is a genre of painting about mortality. Even the bottles carry the key pattern. This is a house that has never once been subtle, and the scents behave accordingly — they are meant to be noticed.

Eros, seven times

The men’s Eros exists as Eau de Toilette, Eau de Parfum and Parfum, plus Flame, Energy and Najim, and there is a women’s Eros as well. The pattern is the usual one — the Eau de Toilette is the original and the brightest, the Parfum is the densest — with two genuine departures: Flame is warmer and more peppery, Najim cooler and more aromatic.

If you only know Eros by reputation, start with the Eau de Toilette. It is the version everyone actually means.

The rest of the men’s side

Dylan Blue is the modern alternative to Eros — fresher, sharper, easier for daytime — and there is a women’s version too. Versace Pour Homme and Eau Fraiche are the older, cleaner citrus end, with an Eau Fraiche Extreme above them.

Then two oddities that have outlived their decade: Blue Jeans and The Dreamer, both from the 1990s, both among the cheapest bottles on this page, and both nothing like anything Versace has released since. Blue Jeans in particular is a period piece and is worth smelling for that reason alone.

The women’s eight

Bright Crystal is the anchor, with Bright Crystal Absolu beside it, and it is one of the most recognisable women’s fragrances of the last twenty years. Yellow Diamonds, Vanitas and Versense fill out the middle, and Red Jeans is the counterpart to Blue Jeans, equally of its era.

For Italian designer fragrance at similar money, Dolce & Gabbana and Giorgio Armani are the two we stock alongside it — Armani being the quiet one and this the loud one. The men’s side is under men’s cologne, the women’s under .