Le Male comes in a bottle shaped like a man's torso, sold inside a tin can. That was 1995, and it is still one of the best-selling men's scents in the world.
The house behind it is a fashion designer, Jean Paul Gaultier, the Frenchman known for the corset and the sailor stripe. His first fragrance was not Le Male. It was Classique, a women's scent from 1993, made by Jacques Cavallier and poured into a bottle shaped like a woman's bust in a tin. Vanilla, orange blossom and ginger. It sold fast.
Le Male came two years later as its male answer, composed by a then-unknown perfumer named Francis Kurkdjian. The blend was a trick that had not been done quite like this before, the cool clean bite of lavender and mint over a soft warm vanilla, a fresh shave sitting on something sweet. Kurkdjian went on to found his own luxury house. Le Male went on to be copied for the next thirty years.
What nobody prints on the box. The bottle did as much work as the juice. That sailor torso is one of the most recognised shapes in perfume, and it sold the scent as much as the smell did. The formula has also been reworked over the decades and made by different owners, the Shiseido group until 2015 and Puig since 2016, so a bottle today is not identical to one from the nineties.
The sailor's DNA, UK-made: our L'homme Elixr (our take on Le Male Elixir) and Ultra Blue (our take on Ultra Male) are 35% concentration sprays. See the Jean Paul Gaultier collection or the best Jean Paul Gaultier dupes in the UK.
