There is a floral for anyone - and everyone. We acknowledge that men have been hardwired to associate florals with feminine fragrances, and so we hope to disrupt this way of thinking, demonstrating that at the heart of even the most masculine fragrances there’s often an excellent floral core to be found. Walk before you begin to run: slowly introducing florals into your fragrant diet is the perfect way to undo conventional binary thinking about what’s masculine and what’s feminine. It’s not about experimentation: it’s so much more profound than that. Rather, it’s about being open to the whole breadth of fragrant connoisseurship, acknowledging that not all florals are the same. Some are fresh and almost citrus-like, some luminous and profound, and others deeply rich, sumptuous, and exuberant. In this article, we’ve shortlisted a curated selection of the best florals for men, designed for the curious and the hardcore floral fan alike.
Classic Florals:
Even the most traditional of masculines have a floral core. When you first smell Czech & Speake’s No. 88, you’re immediately wrapped in a complex and full-bodied fragrance that pulsates between light and dark. Bright and leathery bergamot, smoky vetiver, and shady oakmoss form the general skeletal structure of the composition, but it is an unctuous and spicy rose note that all of this hinges on. A rich and inimitable note intensified with the cooling lemony freshness of geranium. The rose here modifies the fragrance, providing impact and depth, lending No. 88 its sense of confident austerity that is impossible without it. Overall, No. 88 is indubitably a floral fragrance.
Honourable mention must be paid to Bois du Portugal by Creed, which serves as a reminder that lavender too is a floral, and serves as the all-important heart to some of the most memorable masculines on the market today. When paired with sandalwood, cedar, and vetiver (the woody trinity), and the clean soapy rush of bitter orange leaf, it makes for an honest scent: refined, sophisticated, and sensible. Dressed up or dressed down - it’s magnificent.
Dressy Florals:
Amouage has produced some of the most formal and extravagant florals on the market today, thanks to their high concentration of essential oils, quality of ingredients, and a creative spark unique to excellent perfumers alone. Amouage has never been shy about their use of florals in their masculine offerings, clear in the well beloved Reflection Man, utilising high quality materials wedded together with exceptional blending. The fragrance pivots around an utterly charming combination of chewy orange blossom and tender jasmine flower surrounded in purifying herbs. With magnetic force, Reflection Man is grounded with quality musks, rich sandalwood, and tempting patchouli. There is no doubt as to its masculine character - only that it's bright, charming, and alluring.
The fascinating Une Amourette from Etat Libre d'Orange is certainly a dressy number - but more along the lines of an edgy and unusual avant-garde piece. This is an asymmetrical garment, the kind designer Roland Mouret is renowned for. It wears like a work of high fashion, it is cut precisely, technically, its analogue is architectural as much as it is textural. Neroli drapes across the wearer, touched by the heat of skin.
The often delicate note, as soft as silky lace, it cut with an unprecedented aggression; a little tear is not unwelcomed. Its brightness is punctuated with powerful animalic indoles, earthy patchouli and akigalawood, and the purr of white pepper - lending ripeness and warmth to the blossom note, it makes it smell like a more intense version of itself. All at once it is creamy, fresh, dark and light - a little busy at times, but a glorious creation no less. Neroli, often so classically-coded, is catapulted into the resolutely modern.
True Florals:
We call the most direct floral fragrances soliflores: single florals that demonstrate the perfumer’s evocative vision of the flower. Starting with rose: it’s easy to love roses - and it’s equally easy to smell why. It is such a dynamic note in perfumery that no two rose fragrances are ever truly the same, and because of this - you’re bound to find a rose suited to your tastes. In fact, we love roses so much at Men’s Biz that we’ve put together a Rose Sample Pack of six emphatic rose fragrances that gives wearers the opportunity to try rose in all of its metamorphic capability.
For a straight up dose of rose, Eau de Protection by Etat Libre d’Orange is a fistful of crushed roses - petals, stems, and thorns altogether: like a magical soliflore. A bit of danger is good, and Eau de Protection is your personal bubble: spicy roses, green stems, and bloodied thorns. Enlivened and shaded with a veritable blend of ginger, black pepper, cumin, cocoa: this is not merely a singular rose, but a symphony of roses that forms the ideal soliflore.
Etat Libre d’Orange similarly knocks it out of the park with Jasmin et Cigarette, yet another magical soliflore where a clever dose of spicy smoky tobacco and the creamy tint of apricot generate a nocturnal ‘film noir’ portrait of the jasmine flower. Jasmine’s innate creamy facets are bolstered in this composition, and its overall body shimmers behind seductive wisps of smoke. A bold and androgynous jasmine.
Symphonic Florals:
Go all in and unquestionably floral with these scents.
Long time fans of Andy Tauer will immediately recognise Golestan, which recalls previous floral works by the mastermind. This extrait is lush and huge, a veritable tapestry of flowers made possible in the imagination of a great perfumer. Its inspiration is ornament, a style that layers a dizzying bouquet of tuberose, jasmine, orange blossom, ylang-ylang, and rose to produce a classical symphony of florals. These florals find complement via notes of cinnamon, lemon, patchouli, vanilla, and labdanum, on a fine yet sturdy base of woods and ambergris. Golestan exudes and radiates. Florals moving in perfumed space, it is an aromatic and honied pollen-laden cloud that puts everything on display in an endless crescendo. Golestan is warm and paradisal, its immediate impact is ballasted by careful orchestration and a deep understanding of the temperament of each and every natural material. The result is colourful but not outrageous, a busy mosaic with an underlying order.
Nightingale (Zoologist) is a chypre in an opulent floral style, its point of difference the fantasy note of plum blossom, constructed from an accord of ylang-ylang, rose, and geranium. Perfumer Tomoo Inaba emphasises the red tones of this bloom; a glamorous red as lavish as costume or ceremonial garb. Nightingale seamlessly descends from light to dark, an archetypical top of slightly sour bergamot leads to the voluptuous and fruity blossom notes of this fragrance, whilst violet flower adds a tender and powder-soft vintage feeling, echoing a tearful melancholy. Saffron adds strength, bravery, and loving warmth, but also a metallic feel that complements the mossy base of this fragrance. The mossy-floral heart of Nightingale lasts a long time, its florals shifting slowly as incense, oud, and patchouli come forward – revealing a darker, inky, and bitter leather sensation. The rose withers and loses its freshness but regains this in potency. Nightingale is the olfactory equivalent of a pink kimono, celebrating springtime.
Quiet Florals:
Florals have an impressive capacity to be faint and whisper quiet, like a veil that blurs into the skin of the wearer. In Heeley's L'Amandiere (Almond Tree), it is an aromatic picture of spring - a warm breeze through fields of yellow and green, collecting an aroma. The almond tree shivers, it exudes its sweet smell upon the gentle force of the breeze. White tones leap from the background, the fresh and delicate smell of powdery green almond is freshened with the energy of mint and the soaring sizzle of hyacinth flower. This is a dream of many fields of wild flowers in bloom.
The heart of Essential Parfum's Nice Bergamot is full of jasmine, so masterfully integrated that it presents as a singular whole. It leaves charming brightness in its wake, woven amongst further petals of rose and ylang-ylang. Its namesake bergamot note, a particularly fine extract in this instance, operates like a ray of sunlight, bathing the composition from beginning to end. This fragrance is beautifully atmospheric, both lifted and lifting, and is a great introduction to the floral category through a citric passage.
Bold & Adventurous Florals:
As far as bold goes, embracing a powerful symphony of florals, there's no mistaking (or overlooking) MAAI from Bogue. Embracing the fullest possible chypre form, with distinctive aldehydic, amber, and musk tonalities, in its extremity the scent gains in masculine character. It is remarkably androgynous. A boom of jasmine and rose meets the growl of leathery and animalic notes, expending to fill the vastness of perfumed space. A nebula, to wear MAAI is to experience its many shifts and rearrangements - it is unquestionably symphonic, and reaches a magnitude that is nowadays a rare achievement in modern perfumery.
Finally, Nuit de Bakélite by Naomi Goodsir will change everything you expect of tuberose, rendering it a retro green by balancing the heady intensity of tuberose flower with a dewy, mossy, and vegetal base with a delightfully piercing bitter counterpoint. And if that wasn’t enough, this is all then varnished in the humid yellow tone of tropical ylang-ylang. The scent is potent - embracing the radiant power of the tuberose flower.