In what has been one of the most miserable of summers, weather wise, here in the UK, one way – perhaps the only way- of bringing a little sunshine into our lives has been through the liberal spritzing of solar scents, a category of fragrance style which aims to capture the uplifting joy and warmth of the sun.
Imagine golden rays of sparkling sunshine, bottled, the yellowy glow almost vibrating with happiness in its captive glass. Throw in some heat, a few ‘hot holiday’ memories, perhaps a hint of the beach and a nod to the uplifting power of citrus notes and you’ve got the basic idea.
These are fragrances to make you smile, to raise your spirits and to act a little like a mini break holiday with each spritz. It’s no accident much of the packaging design used for solar scents revolves around the colours yellow and orange, with their strong association with energy, vibrancy and yes, sunshine.
We commissioned some original market research with the excellent Beauty Buddy team recently, and discovered 25% of the respondents (270 of them, from varied demographics and age ) wear perfume to improve their mood, indicating the importance of the emotional impact of a fragrance.
The ingredients used are those that tap into happiness; uplifting lemon, bergamot and mandarin, perhaps a dash of exotic yuzu, a zing of energising ginger and maybe a dash of easy-going coconut to remind you of that vacation-vibe.
Night blooming florals such as jasmine, orange blossom and ylang ylang, are often picked for their heady excess to remind you of balmy, scented holiday nights. Warmth comes from soft, resiny base notes such as ambery cistus labdanum and comforting vanilla.
All of which makes solar scents a perfect choice to wear for summer, or, in the case of the UK currently, for pretending it’s summer. We’ve picked an edit here that has an interesting story to tell. No one we’ve selected mentions lemon groves in Amalfi in the storytelling, which is the yawningly over-used, go-to reference for lemony sunshine, surely the citrus fruit has a more engaging story to tell?
In his excellent book Atlas of Perfumed Botany, Jean-Claude Ellena is reminded of Louis Malle’s film Atlantic City whenever he works with lemons, remembering a mesmerising scene in which main protagonist Sally Matthews – who works at an oyster bar – throws open her sunny apartment windows on returning from work and rubs lemon halves over her arms and chest to remove the pungent smell of oysters. That’s a much more seductive reference than farming fruit.
Much like the sunshine itself, which needs enjoying instantly due to its fleeting nature here in London, solar scents, particularly those using heavy amounts of citrus notes, need using swiftly.
Speaking in the excellent Postmodern Perfumer newsletter, Olivier David, associate professor of organic chemistry at the University of Versailles, points out the high turpene content in citrus based scents makes them sensitive to oxidation, which is when your fragrance ‘turns’ and smells off.
We’d therefore recommend spritzing your solar scents with gusto, there should be no holding back. This should not be a problem for most people as our Beauty Buddy market research indicated that 28% or those questioned had between six and nine bottles of fragrance, with 19% owning more than 15 bottles, with 53% of respondents spraying fragrance a number of times a day.
So, in the words of the great Morecambe and Wise (younger readers may need to look this up, it’s worth it) here are five solar scents to ‘bring me sunshine, all the while…’
Un Deux Trois Soleil by Bastille Paris
A brand that is “French from the get-go” according to its co-owner Sophie Maisant, Bastille is a wonderful example of a fragrance house working hard to be as sustainable as possible through transparency. From its ingredients – which are mostly naturals – to its construction – using minimal process and as few ingredients as possible in the formula, through to its recyclable packaging, it wears its heart on its website and tells you exactly what’s in and on the bottle/box.
Ms Maisant, who has years of experience in the fragrance industry, wants to create a brand that offers comfortable, beautiful scents that give you the freedom to be your olfactory self. Un Deux Trois Soleil, created by perfumer Domitille Michalon-Bertier, is like inhaling nostalgia, whisking you back to a sunny moment in childhood, perhaps during the long, school summer holidays, where time stretches endlessly in front of you and the sun is high in the clear blue sky. Imagine the warmth from sunbaked grassy fields, sunshine on glowing skin and the promise of Victoria sponge for tea. The fragrance is all soft sunshine, wrapped around anchoring wafts of almondy-vanilla and a smudge of earthiness from a hardly there incense note. It’s a beauty.
Lumière Dorée by Miller Harris
Whenever we are editing fragrances for a feature, Miller Harris always seems to have a good example of what we’re trying to talk about. So it is with sunshine, where the brand’s gorgeous Lumière Dorée is described as “Energising sunshine, filtered through the branches of the orange tree”.
The fragrance is a celebration of neroli, the honey-sweet blossom from the bitter orange tree, which is pimped up with bergamot at the beginning to add vibrancy, then anchored with pettigrain, a herbaceous woody distillation of the leaves, sticks and small branches of the orange blossom tree. So, you get many layers of orange blossom love here, and if neroli is your thing, then this is a winning scent to try. It’s bright sunshine, but with the edges smoothed down, softer and more relaxed than a typical citrus, it feels sophisticated, but without too much effort. And if its egg yolk yellow box has you reaching for your paint shade card and thinking “that would be nice on a wall…” you wont be the first.
Desert Rose by Veronique Gabai
When we met Veronique Gabai, long time industry insider and newish brand owner, she explained her huge love for naturals, she feels these notes have a luminosity and complexity that the brain understands as they bloom on the skin, although she will use a brilliant synthetic if it meets her exacting standards of quality.
We didn’t so much try the fragrances as ‘feel’ them. Veronique instructed us to inhale, close our eyes and feel where the fragrance went in our bodies. This might be a little too woo-woo for some but goodness me, it worked. As we sat, we could feel the affect of the Heart fragrance (our first trial and from Veronique’s Aroma Collection) working its way down our bodies, through the throat, solar plexus and into our hearts, which actually felt warmer and more open. We were a good 15 minutes into the experience before we even mentioned ingredients, it was all about the reaction our bodies and minds had to the fragrance. That for Veronique, is what scent is all about, and she claims your body will ‘pick’ the one that it needs.
Our bodies picked Desert Rose, a glowing, sunshine filled blast of heart’s ease, soothing yet also uplifting, joyful but also quite anchored due to, we suspect, the cedar wood and softening musk notes. This is the most expensive of our edit, from the brand’s signature collection, but the additional wellness benefits might help, or are we just enabling here?
Solar Essay by & Other Stories
It’s a mystery to us why dupes are so popular; they fade very fast, don’t smell like the real thing and are unauthorised copies, which in our eyes is cheating. Where we’d acknowledge there is a real price problem with luxury fragrances, which have seen stratospheric rises in the last few years, there are some really beautiful and original fragrances available from brands which are much better value for money.
&Other Stories is a great place to go for good value fragrances, with many of them credited to one of our favourite perfumers Jérôme Epinette, as well as Byredo’s Ben Gorham. Solar Essay has a holiday vibe to it, due to its soft, lemony-coconut opening, you’re almost feeling the sun’s warmth on your skin as you imagine drifting towards a beach umbrella…
Solar Essay gives a gentle nod to the gourmand trend, it’s got a sweetness, but it’s not a hits-your-bloodstream sugar rush. Instead a more botanically based, soft cyclamen floral note adds in hints of summer flowers, with powdery mimosa offering a feeling of textural softness, like a cool cotton shirt sprinkled with golden sunrays. Easy breezy sunshine bottled alongside beach-based happiness.
Sunny Side Up by Juliette Has A Gun
Another easy going fragrance that sums up the summer we wish we were having is Juliette Has A Gun’s Sunny Side Up. This is a great demonstration of how the creamy soft notes of sandalwood provide the perfect gentle base for solar scents. Supporting the fragrance without dominating, the milky-soft sandalwood absorbs the cocktail of coconut, jasmine, vanilla and buttery orris and offers it back as a time machine, transporting you to the perfect summer’s day, surrounded by friends, eating ice cream, warm, sun-kissed limbs slick with suncream, stress free and full of joy.
Perhaps this is the measure of a good solar scent, being able to imagine the feelings and emotions of summer in just one inhalation, building up the idea of a perfect sunny day with the help of the fragrance ingredients. Storytelling helps of course, hence all the yellow packaging, but a talented perfumer can lift us from the grey doldrums mediocrity and transport us to sunnier climes. It might be the best we can expect this year.
Our beautiful images are by the brilliant Kate Anglestein
Set design by Elena Horn
