These 'party in a perfume' spritzes are like drenching yourself in champagne sparkle (and they’re the self-gift you deserve for dealing with 2020)
It's the festive season but not as we know it. No office parties or piling into the back seat of a cab in a jumble of sequins, big coats, lipstick and blowdries. Then asking the driver to crank up the Bublé.
It’s at this time of year we naturally crave perfume the most, as the Christmas lights go on and the diary fills up with catch-ups and festive events. A big, ballsy and beautiful party perfume is the ultimate accessory that can boost our confidence, like a pair of invisible scented stilettos.
We'd argue fragrance is even more important in these WFH days, it can feel like the only shred of luxury and elegance we have left as we slip on yet another pair of joggers (not complaining btw). We're also big believers that applying fragrance is an act of self-love.
So despite the festive season being scuppered, you won't find us bemoaning the lack of Secret Santas or the state of our social lives. NO WAY! We’re going to channel our inner Joan Collins circa 1980, paint on a completely inappropriate slick of liquid eyeliner for today’s Zooms and spray a perfume that’s so major, so magnificent and so inappropriate it’s like you’ve swan-dived into a giant Champagne saucer and reappeared in real-life Kira Kira.
Wait.. what do you mean you don’t have one?
We're delighted to come to the rescue with these scented stunners that swirl with fiesta vibes and smell like actual glitter. Our advice is to wear them with wild abandon, whether you’re at that kitchen table or down the veg aisle in Tesco’s at 7pm.
Plus, they’re precisely the kind of epic freedom fragrances you’re going to want to spray yourself silly with when we can finally wave goodbye to lockdown tiers and finally step back out into society and choose what, where and who to mingle with...
The fruity ingenue
Tom Ford Bitter Peach Eau de Parfum, £228, Selfridges
Tom Ford has taken one of the most promiscuous fruits in town and given it a Hollywood makeover with all the gloss and glitz of an Oscars red carpet strut. Think A-lister wonderland of mega-yachts, bespoke gowns and Selling Sunset square-footage. At first spritz, you get a quenching twist of fleshy peach nectar but it’s not all sweet and naive; there’s a zippy citrus flash that makes it sharp and biting, creating an addictively juicy sensation that literally dribbles down your throat and invades your senses. Then comes the big-bucks transformation: a rich cloak of boozy rum, leathery cognac and heady resins. It’s the kind of fragrance that flutters its eyelashes, seduces grandad and gets away with anything. She’s a beautiful ingenue turned bitch-in-couture and we want a slice of that (peach) pie.
The champagne mist
Chanel No5 The Hair Mist, £40, Boots
We couldn’t type the word ‘Champagne’ in a perfume feature without including Chanel No5. The iconic 1921 fragrance is hailed as a game-changer for using an aldehyde compound to manipulate, heighten and invigorate ingredients – in this case rose, jasmine and iris root among others – like adding fizz to wine to turn it into champagne. The result? An ice-cold, powdery and soapy scent with an addictive shimmering glow that stimulates some kind of sensational sensorial euphoria, then dries down into a skin-clutching woody linger. New for this season is a gorgeous Hair Mist version of the perfume in this chic frosted bottle: the scent is still as glorious and recognisable but with added nourishing oils to make hair shine (but that don’t actually leave an oily residue). It’s the perfect subtle glam-booster and it lasts for ages.
The sweet treat
Britney Spears Festive Fantasy Eau de Toilette, £17.50, Boots
We need you Britney, and your insane patisserie-trolley perfume has been rolled into our lives as if by divine intervention, sprinkling a spectacle of sugary glitter over current-affairs gloom. Scent-wise, it’s like Smiggle got bottled up with a jammy gloss of ripe black cherries, plums and dewberries, then lifted by a flutter of fresh white petals. And just like when you walk out of the store, the aroma is on you for hours and hours with a lingering halo of creamy-sweet doughnuts dipped in vanilla syrup. It is the perfume equivalent of playing Hit Me Baby One More Time on a ghetto blaster outside 10 Downing Street on a dismal announcement day: so LOLs, so needed, so absurd, so WGAF.
The disco queen
Estee Lauder Beautiful Absolu Collector’s Edition, £72, Boots
Picture the scene when the iconic Beautiful originally launched back in 1985 and sales went completely nuts. Along the streets of Manhattan was this rising XXL floral-bomb scent of badass empowerment and feminism energy. In fact, it was such a ‘moment’ that Andy Warhol himself declared his love of Beautiful and wore it obsessively. How cool is that? To honour that incredible heritage, Estee Lauder are celebrating Beautiful’s 25th anniversary with a limited edition intense ‘Absolu’ version in this Warhol-tribute presentation box.
So what does it smell like? First you get a rush of juicy blackcurrant that literally makes your mouth water. Then, like an intense Grace Jones disco anthem, it radiates and grows into an electrifying crescendo of floral explosions – tuberose, jasmine, rose, mimosa, narcissus, ylang ylang, magnolia, lilac, freesia, carnation boom boom boom all the good flowers – and suddenly you’re dancing a on a table under a glitterball without a care in the world. That is how this perfume makes you feel, and you deserve that!
The dark romantic
La Librairie Oud Poudré Eau de Toilette, £20, Boots
Boots have created some seriously impressive fragrances this year and this new Oud interpretation has us all giddy for New Year's Eve romance and mischief. The prized ingredient is a dark, rich and intense resin that seeps from the Agar tree in the Middle East and its smoky, spiritual scent gives a perfume the most phenomenal oriental mystique. What makes this one different compared to many other oud fragrances is that it’s combined with a little talcum powder freshness, like adding a sweep of highlighter to a velvety-matte complexion. It’s a starry night under city fairy lights, bottled up with the warm and fuzzy reassurance that a black cab is on its way.
The shimmying sizzler
Christian Louboutin Loubifunk Eau de Parfum, £225, Harrods
Fiesta you say? Oh we got it here! Shimmying into town this season is Loubiworld, Christian Louboutin’s imaginarium collection of 7 fragrances inspired by his exotic travels and hedonistic fantasies. With its mad pineapple lid and signature red bottle, Loubifunk is his tribute to the carnivals of Rio and sizzling samba dance-offs, and it’s just the ticket to liven up your December lull. It kicks off with a burst of tangy blackcurrant and explodes with so much rose confetti it’s like you’re crowd-surfing over a billion freshly-picked petals wearing a peacock feather headdress and diamante bikini.
The glittering masterpiece
Zara Royal Softness Eau de Parfum, £15.99, Zara
How great is this name? It’s the textural and scented equivalent to Beth’s final outfit in The Queen’s Gambit: an all-white ensemble of a regal A-line coat, trousers and hat - transforming her into the ultimate chess piece silhouette: the white Queen herself. Poised, elegant, composed and supreme, this features frosty-cool Lily of the valley that’s as crystalline as snow that’s frozen over. As it takes hold of your skin, there’s a creamy Ambroxan blend that melts all the sharp notes away, winning you over note by note, move by move, piece by piece.
The fashion fantasy
More is More! Eau de Parfum, £95, Judith Lieber
We promised you fun so how about an interactive fragrance! Remember those biros you had at school with clickable red, black, green and blue cartridges within one vessel? This is the perfume version. Within this (erm slightly naughty looking) gold bottle gadget are three scent chambers – a citrus, a floral and an oriental: they’re stunning enough to wear on their own, but you can also blend two or three together depending on what you fancy wearing that day. It’s like a semi-bespoke experience with 7 perfumes in just one bottle. When we first saw this we were a little dubious, thinking ‘hang on chaps you can't just layer up a zesty citrus with a heady oriental, that’s going to smell all kinds of wrong.’ And then we found out the nose behind More is More! is Jerome di Marino (possibly the hottest perfumer we’ve ever seen) who created each scent in a way that could be enhanced and balanced by the others. Each chamber has a swipeable button and 1, 2 or 3 crystal dots to indicate which scent is which. This is exactly the kind of elaborate fun-factor Judith Lieber has been bringing to fashion for decades with her fantasy Swarovski clutches (hamburgers, peacocks, fruit, lipsticks… you name it, she’s made it into a purse) and this mad perfume concept is as beautiful and bonkers as her accessories. Our fave combo? Floral + Oriental, which has an enveloping cosy warmth with a glimmer of fresh white petals.
