Rose.

Rose is the most photographed flower in perfumery and the hardest to wear well. Damascena from Isparta in Turkey and Grasse in Provence; centifolia (the 'May rose') from Morocco; and the elusive Ta'if rose grown at 1,500 metres in the Saudi mountains — each speaks a different dialect of the same word. By dawn the petals are picked by hand, their oil heaviest with the cool air; by mid-morning the volatiles have already begun to flee.

Distilled into rose otto, the result is faintly green, faintly metallic, edged with honey and lemon. Solvent-extracted into absolute, it is deeper, jammier, more wine-soaked. Modern perfumers often layer the two to give a single rose composition both its dewy morning face and its candle-lit evening one.

On skin, real rose is romantic without being soft, classical without being dated. It is the note that turns a juvenile sweetness into something adult and considered — the reason a rose oud reads as luxury and a rose cologne reads as sophistication.