Signature Blue Mark Jack Black www.getjackblack.com

Emily Dalton and Curran Dandurand had worked long enough in the beauty industry, listening to men who were curious about treatment products, but afraid to touch anything too “feminine” or “complicated”. So they decided to solve the problem and created their own brand, exclusively for the male of the species, called Jack Black.

Dalton and Dandurand have come up with very nice bottles and tubes that recall old-world apothecary potions, reinforced with more than a touch of masculine liquor bottles and cigar-box labels. But the caveat, of course, is that while the packaging may get the thing into a guy’s hand, the brand itself lives or dies by the product inside. And the product, to an immense degree, lives or dies by its scent.

So what are traditional masculine smells? Peppermint, menthol, sage, lavender, eucalyptus, rosemary. And gin. If practical, romantic masculinity with a healthy shot of Gordon’s is your muse, then the right people to create scents for your products are Claude Dir and Yann Vasnier at the scent-maker Givaudan.

Vasnier did Jack Black Signature Black Mark; Dir did Blue and Silver Mark. Again, terrific packaging with the right touch of humour (“Splash on responsibly”, reads the back of the box), and each of the three could have been carried around in a small silver flask tucked into a dopp kit next to the aftershave.

Black is, unsurprisingly, the darkest of the three, the scent of smoky charcoal and charred herbs and seasoned leather. A bit cleft chin for my taste. Silver is somewhat less stoic and more flying ace. Dir used synthetics called isobut-ylquinolines to create a nice leather; an excellent natural Guatemalan cardamom for a pungent spice exoticism; and a synthetic called Ebanol, a new Givaudan captive (patented) molecule, for a creamy sandalwood finish.

Of the three, I favour Blue Mark. I have been waiting years for a mint fragrance, an idea as obviously ingenious as it is ingeniously obvious, and Dir, Dalton and Dandurand go a decent way to furnishing one. Blue’s basic components result in a culinary masterpiece. Dir began with a marvellous tangy ginger and a Japanese juniper material so gorgeous it takes your breath away. And then he added something as mundane as it is magical: a little molecule called carvone laevo. Carvone laevo is what’s called a “nature identical synthetic”, which is to say you can find the molecule in nature, but it’s cheaper and cleaner to just make it. And it’s quixotic, a scent fluctuating between a sweet, ethereal spearmint and a light caraway seed.

The limiting factor in Blue — and Silver and Black — is the target audience. Most men fear fragrances that are too creative. No self-respecting World War I pilot is going to splash on this much overt beauty. So Dir wrapped Blue in Agarbois, a straightforward Givaudan woody captive that reassures the guys. But while this addition is a wise commercial decision, its effect is to almost entirely tame the mesmerising elixir of mint and Asian mountain. The good news is, first, that you can still perceive it on skin — a masculine scent with a great heart. And secondly, Jack Black can always make a fourth scent for men, one that doesn’t reassure but rather blows the guys away. They’ve already got the basic architecture for it.