Clean up nice with these fresh scents.

Cleanliness might be next to godliness, but unless a well-groomed man also smells good, any deification will go largely unnoticed. The torch-through-a-sheet winter sunshine is gearing up to break through to spring, and so now’s a better time than any to invest in a new fragrance. Fresh, sprightly and warm without being too overpowering, here are five of our favourite scents to take you through the coming season.

Perfume companies founded by celebrities aren’t always the most refined (sorry Britney), but the polymathic Mr Richard E Grant has proven that being a devilishly good actor and an expert perfumer are not mutually exclusive skills. Jack Perfume draws on Mr Grant’s “lifelong obsession with smelling everything in sight” and combines notes of orange, lime, ginger and musk that makes it fresh and mature all at once, much like its Oscar-nominated creator.

Byredo, founded in 2006, is part of a new wave of perfumers that don’t prescribe too heavily to gender in their concoctions (see also: Le Labo, Frederic Malle and Jo Malone London), and Black Saffron is a prime example of this approach working to great effect. Neither too masculine nor feminine, it has top notes of sweet-smelling Chinese grapefruit and saffron that opens up to smooth scents of leather, black violet and raspberry. If you like Tom Ford’s Tuscan Leather but are after something a little lighter for spring, this one’s got your name on it.

Pink peppercorns from the Peruvian pepper tree, vanilla-tobacco and “woodland aromatics”? The scents in this Tonka scent from Laboratory Perfumes sound like a Mr Lewis Carroll poem rendered in olfactory form, and its scent is faintly fruity while maintaining a zingy warmth. Mixing the sharp tang of mandarin with the woody, floral depth of the peppercorns, it’s a well-rounded modern scent to take you from winter to spring.

Floris London might have been founded way back when in 1730, but that doesn’t mean its scents are old-fashioned. This Bergamot & Sandalwood fragrance mixes the established traditions of the brand with a timeless sensibility, and its “No. 89” name is in reference to the perfumer’s store on London’s illustrious Jermyn Street.

Vetiver, a tropical grass native to India (but mostly farmed in Haiti nowadays), has a smoky scent that’s earthy, green and ever-so-slightly bitter. Ms Azzi Glasser, the nose behind The Perfumer’s Story, has distilled its essence into “Mr Vetivert”, a fragrance that she says is “incredibly charismatic, seductive, debonair, and alluring”. A lot to pack into one fragrance – and a lot of power to wield in a bottle – but this manages it all.