What to wear in Summer – top scents for the beach and beyond

ONE TO WEAR IN A HEATWAVE You Or Someone Like You by Etat Libre D’Orange

When the mercury’s rising, this scent is like taking a dip in a mojito. It bursts with freshness – lovely ripped mint leaves mixed up with citrussy zest and stirred together with ice. After a few minutes the frosty edge melts off and a beautiful pinky rose starts to emerge. For such a top-note-dominant fragrance this has (at the risk of sounding like a Colgate commercial) freshness that lasts and lasts. And I love its deviation from the heaviness – both in formulation and connotation – that so many of ELDO’s scents are burdened with. Effortlessly cool.

£82 for 50ml, £115 for 100ml from Bloom

ONE TO WEAR HOLDING A BUCKET AND SPADE What I Did On My Holidays by 4160 Tuesdays

This is a message in a bottle straight from the British seaside. Every sniff rockets me back to sticky 1980s summers, mostly spent buried up to my neck on a Lyme Regis beach. I’ve never experienced a perfume that evokes such a true sense of nostalgia. This is the scent of the seaside shop where you go sandy-footed to buy your crabbing nets and your lilo. Mint rock, vanilla ice cream, coconut suntan lotion and fresh salty air…it’s sweet in every way.

£15 for 9ml – £90 for 100ml from 4160 Tuesdays

ONE TO WEAR WITH A BIKINI  Soleil Blanc by Tom Ford

This is a super-sexy scent, perfectly mimicking the sultriness of sunkissed skin. It’s suntan lotion on overdrive; beautiful coconut oil blended with blooming white flowers, radiating melanin-production and fun. A slightly cheap (sadly not in price) but glamorous scent, designed to pair perfectly with red lipstick on the beach – in Saint Tropez, not St Ives. Save it for sundown.

£139 for 50ml, £207 for 100ml from AllBeauty (amongst others)

ONE TO WEAR AL FRESCO Pure Azure by Phaedon

I’m desperately after a full bottle of Pure Azure. It’s so delicious – a big, beautiful, complex fig fragrance, full of lovely warm orange blossom and sun-drenched florals. According to the lovely guys at Bloom, the neroli at its heart is ‘derived through steam distillation of orange tree blossom as opposed to much spicier and honeyed absolute obtained through CO2 extraction’. However, they’ve done it, the result is gorgeously and truly Mediterranean. This is one to be savoured under grape vines and warm dark skies, at a table of mouth-watering mezze that keeps coming until you say stop. A real wrist-snuffler.

£112 for 100ml from Bloom