Givenchy Perfumes & Colognes

Sixteen bottles, eleven men’s and five women’s. Seven of the eleven carry the same word, and the gap between the oldest and the newest of them is nearly fifty years.

The couturier who dressed one woman

Hubert de Givenchy opened in Paris in 1952, and within two years had met the person who would define his career. He dressed Audrey Hepburn from Sabrina in 1954 onwards — including the black dress at the start of Breakfast at Tiffany’s — and the two worked together for four decades.

In 1957 he went further and made her a perfume. L’Interdit was created for Hepburn personally, and for a while she was the only person allowed to wear it; the name means “forbidden”. Very few houses can claim a fragrance made for one named individual, and it is worth knowing about even though we do not stock it.

What that history left behind is a house style: restrained, formal, and more interested in cut than in noise. It runs through everything on this page.

Gentleman, 1974 and 2023

The original Givenchy Gentleman arrived in the mid-1970s — a dark, dry patchouli and leather fragrance of a kind almost nobody makes now. It is still in production and it is the least expensive bottle here.

Half a century later the house is still using the word. Gentleman was relaunched entirely in 2017 as something quite different, and the line now runs to seven: Intense, Boisée, Réserve Privée, Society, Society Extreme and Gentlemen Only.

Be careful here, because the name is doing two jobs. The 1970s original and the modern Society are not related in anything but the label. If someone recommends “Givenchy Gentleman” to you, ask which one they mean.

Pi, and the older men’s bottles

Pi is the one people remember — a vanilla and almond fragrance from 1998 that was unusual then and still is. Givenchy Pour Homme and Blue Label are the cleaner, more conventional options, and Xeryus is the oldest and sharpest of them.

The women’s five, and they are all classics

There is nothing modern on this side of the page, and that is the appeal. Ysatis (1984), Amarige (1991), Organza (1996) and Very Irresistible are all fragrances that were large and confident in their day and have stayed in production because people kept buying them. Amarige in particular is famously enormous — a tuberose that fills a room — and is either the best or the worst thing here depending entirely on who you ask.

For French designer fragrance in the same tradition, Dior and Yves Saint Laurent are the two we stock alongside it. The women’s five are under .