Just got back from your Euro summer tour? Your last festival wristband still hanging on by a thread? Are you, too, dreading summer’s inevitable end? We’re all too familiar with that feeling when you’re biking home from the club at sunrise, half-dead but fully romanticising every cloud, traffic light, and even the rats, like you’re starring in an indie coming-of-age film… Until the next day, when you realise you were just dehydrated and feeling way too many feelings. Still, in the moment, mythologising those moments feels good… So much so that we start yearning for something new to romanticise again, even when we know it probably wasn’t that nice in real life.
Ultimately, sometimes we just feel the need to crash out, spiral, romanticise, and overthink, and sometimes a perfume is the perfect final push. We will always chase the things (read: perfumes) we can’t have: endless summers, limited editions, or worse, the scent that lives only on the hoodie of someone who ghosted you.
If you, like us, are the type to cling to moments that are just (almost) out of reach, then this is for you. Below, find a list of scents made for romantics who fall hard, and maybe a little embarrassingly, for all the wrong things.
For those who romanticise their parasocial relationship with subway strangers:
Frederic Malle, En Passant: This scent is made to embody that feeling you get when that specific stranger passes you on your Monday morning commute. It’s always the same person, blonde hair, Chanel skirt suit, just out of reach. She passes and disappears in the crowd again, all you catch is the trail she leaves behind: dusty, rosy, lilac-y. Like those movie scenes where someone locks eyes with the main character amid a sea of people, and when they blink, they’re gone. The whole encounter (consisting of nothing really) makes you rethink your life during your overflowing metro ride.
The way En Passant sits on the skin is maddening. The scent is that of soft lilac and cucumber water: dewy, barely there, like it’s playing hide-and-seek. You think it’s disappeared, then it comes back in a sharp wave, as if even when you’re wearing it, it’s still walking away from you. I don’t know how they did it, but it really does smell like someone just walked past you, even when the scent is on your own wrist. What’s so cute about Frédéric Malle is that they give you the option to “find your signature scent.” It’s meant to help you find out who you are. But maybe, if you try really hard, you can describe the person you lost in a crowd, and find the scent of her instead.
Smells like: Lilac, cucumber, Annie Ernaux’s Exteriors, and what’s that word for ‘nostalgia for a time you’ve never known’ again?
Wear if: you don’t want to be noticed, but you’re waiting to be found.
For those who romanticise transience:
Le Labo, Osmanthus 19 is for those clinging to fleeting moments like their life depends on it. Are you someone riddled with FOMO? This rare fragrance is built around the short-lived bloom of the osmanthus flower, an apricot-tinted floral treasured in Kyoto for its juicy, creamy scent. It peeks through soft incense notes that feel like an embrace and then disappears just as quickly. You’ll want to smell like this forever, but nature (and Le Labo’s production calendar) says: no.
Osmanthus 19 is here for a good time, not a long time. It’s only available during the brief osmanthus bloom, the month of September, and thats exactly what it smells like. This scent weaponises scarcity. Like that viral bakery in town where you queue for 45 minutes praying they haven’t sold out of pistachio cruffins just before you get to the till: it’s a scent that teaches you not everything beautiful sticks around.
Smells like: the first sweater after summer, spending some time in a Ryokan filled with weird trinkets, woody
Wear if: You have the shoppies and need a deadline to justify emotional spending.
For anyone chasing Greta Garbo life with a backpacker’s wallet.
Vilhelm Parfumerie, Room Service is for the people who wanna raid the hotel minibar but know it’s out of their tax bracket. Even when you’re in a motel with flickering lights and worn-through carpeting, this perfume lets you pretend you’re in a suite with velvet curtains and a man in the lobby who keeps calling you “Miss.” You’re not. But you’re allowed to fantasise about that when bed bugs are too close for comfort.
Room Service smells like Old Hollywood sadness and drama: violet petals, bamboo, orchid, and sandalwood. It’s based on Greta Garbo (the mysterious, aloof, and enchanting yet sad mime-looking actress). “There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person,” Greta Garbo once said. Room Service is a bottle of that mood: private, cinematic, and slightly tragic. It’s luxurious, but emotionally unavailable. Fun fact: It’s Victoria Beckham’s signature scent.
Smells like: Raye’s song “Escapism”
Wear if: You would accept the offer if the person you ghosted texted you ‘wyd tonight’
For those who romanticise their ‘polyphonic perception’ after hearing the beats in a Justin Timberlake song:
Comme des Garçons, Max Richter 01: A perfume inspired by the intangibility of music, which might confuse even the most militant synesthesia enthusiasts. Crafted by composer Max Richter with the disruptive noses at Comme des Garçons, this scent is built with graphite, vetiver, piano soundboard cedar, violin bow rosin, and magnetic tape. Max Richter said: “I’ve always wanted to compose a perfume because, in my mind, scent and sound are sisters. In both mediums you work by relying on, or being in touch with, the things you don’t yet know, and that is really exciting to me.” Knowing their brown-scotch-tape perfume a bit too well, this new fragrance makes me very excited.
Smells like: Your dad’s VHS tape of that damn violin recital
Wear if: You have an opinion on the statement “three equals orange”
For those who romanticise their 2 a.m. journal entries and think they should start a subscription-based newsletter:
Ephemeral Dyadic: Another World. Ephemeral Dyadic is practically a manifesto disguised as a fragrance brand. Born in a tiny art studio in the industrial edges of Istanbul, they live by the idea that “scents are temporary, feelings aren’t.” Which is dramatic – and I beg that it isn’t true (thinking of many a situationship here). Another World opens with ink and black pepper – spiky and strange – but dries down to pine and cedar. Even though the ink smells more like a sharpie than the “traditional” type that’s used for a fountain pen, it has us thinking, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” It’s giving secret tumblr fan-fiction account, and limerence. Definitely worth the try.
Smells like: Scribbling confessions on club bathroom stalls
Wear if: You promised yourself you’d move on but your late-night drafts say otherwise
Words by Pykel van Latum
