Bethan Cole writes about lavender fragrances in the Times Online:

“The immediate reaction is, it’s blowsy, fusty, stale-smelling, old-fashioned and grannified,” says James Craven, senior fragrance advisor and archivist at the connoisseurs’ boutique Les Senteurs. “And for men, it’s too effeminate. There is a great nervousness with men about lavender.” Yet we here at Style Towers think lavender, contrary to received opinion and that of Elizabeth I, who famously hated it, is a supremely stylish perfume option for a man: piquant yet velveteen, astringent yet mellifluous, tart yet tranquillising.

I must be the only one who finds lavender to be more masculine than feminine? Read the rest of the article here, and many thanks to Marcello for the link.