For anyone who has ever walked into a lumberyard and stopped dead in his tracks at the smell: that beautiful, rich, unforgettable smell of mahogany, pine plank, oak, particle board, cedar dust et al.— your fragrances have arrived.

Under Tom Ford’s artistic direction, Michel Almairac has created Gucci Pour Homme , a scent that manages to be something the French call premier degré: the obvious that also happens to be beautiful. Almairac is a prolific Frenchman who concocts scents in every register, from Bond No. 9’s postmodernist the Scent of Peace to Gucci’s gauzy, jet-fueled masterpiece Rush. But in Pour Homme, he created … a cedar. That’s it. Pour Homme is an excellent cedar that lasts on the skin, diffuses nicely and seduces with the guilelessness of a hardware store. If Restoration Hardware was smart, it would install Pour Homme in the air ducts, and every store would smell mesmerizingly alive. It takes talent to create such simplicity. Pour Homme is perfectly premier degré.