Vanilla Perfume Is All Grown Up, and You Need to Start Wearing It

As someone who’s spent the last 15 years writing a dessert column and many a perfume article, writing a book on French cakes, and publishing a cookbook called Chocolat, maybe it’s no surprise that people often ask me if I wear a gourmand perfume. My answer—always a flat-out no—seems to make people suspicious.

I understand the confusion. Why, if I love sweets, would I not want to smell like one? I could say I’ve no desire to smell like a cupcake; I love my dog beyond all reason, but don’t need to smell like him. I could ask why anyone would assume I’m sweet simply because I can bake my way out of a box. (Perhaps not the best PR tactic.) These would all be earnest responses. Instead, I tell them another truth: I do love a good vanilla perfume, just not a sweet one.

Years of sourcing the best vanilla beans have, in fact, made me a deep appreciator of vanilla’s irresistible and complex aroma. Vanilla is universal, and talking vanilla creates trust, nostalgia, a sense of home, and a shared experience, but, with its defiant sexiness—unlike a note like patchouli—vanilla is considered at once equally comforting and seductive.

No wonder, then, that vanilla is having a major moment in perfume. About five years ago, a new crop of vanilla scents started popping up everywhere, and the majority of the newcomers smelled like cupcake icing, the kind made with artificial vanilla flavoring, the type that screams grade-school birthday parties and conjures a submissive babydoll image of femininity.

Is perfume political? Absolutely. These vanilla fragrances had a cheap, easy, almost superficial allure (at best). They were the kind that Margot Robbie’s Barbie would have ditched the moment she found her mojo. But there was something else at work, too. Vanilla, biotech beauty entrepreneur Jasmina Aganovic explained to me, is what people turn to when uncertainty prevails. In other words, who, in today’s global chaos, doesn’t crave the sweet, familiar comfort of a cupcake?

Thankfully, while commercial fragrance houses were turning out mass-appeal liquid frosting, a group of serious, brilliant perfumers were focusing on vanilla in ways that offered that necessary whiff of comfort but also the complexity and sophistication and artistry that a good vanilla deserves. Having now tried dozens, I’ve found some knockouts. I’ve also rediscovered the classics and how utterly contemporary they smell, even today.

The Classics

In 1925, Jacques Guerlain created Shalimar ($140, Guerlain), setting the House of Guerlain on a meteoric rise to international success. What set Shalimar apart, and what has kept it a beloved classic, was its heady and original note of vanilla. Many consider it the first true vanilla fragrance, and, while it has notes of bergamot and iris, it is the vanilla that makes it seductive.

From the moment Guerlain became toute la rage, vanilla began making appearances in everything from floral, citrus, woody, tobacco, and incense perfumes. It popped up most often as a base note, lingering on the skin with its warm, familiar touch.

Along the way, a series of classics were born. Frederic Malle’s groundbreaking Musc Ravageur ($225, Frederic Malle); Yves Saint Laurent’s leathery Baby Cat ($330, YSL Beauty); Thierry Mugler’s fruity Angel ($150, Sephora); Van Cleef and Arpels’s sheer Orchidée Vanille (Van Cleef & Arpels); Dior’s subtly boozy Vanilla Diorama ($330, Dior); Serge Lutens’s Un Bois Vanille ($229, Serge Lutens), a gorgeous, well-guarded Parisian secret; Indult’s Tihota ($220, Lucky Scent), an early Francis Kirkdijan; and Xerjoff’s Dama Bianca ($257, Xerjoff), which beckons with an unimaginably delicate beauty.

The Vanilla Renaissance

If 100 years of Shalimar have given us a whiff of wisdom, it is that, when approached with artistry, vanilla remains every bit as modern and beguiling as it was in 1925. Vanilla is the ingredient that every ambitious perfumer seeks to weave into a new spell, and it is the note we continue to crave in all its many facets.

This year, Guerlain celebrates Shalimar’s birthday with the release of Shalimar L’Essence ($175, Sephora), an explosion of luminous vanilla.

BDK Parfums’ latest release, Vanille Caviar ($261, BDK Parfums), has to be one of the chicest scents I’ve smelled. It’s Parisian to the core and eminently confident in its ability to attract. It’s neither loud nor sweet, neither light nor dark. It has a mysterious quality, grounded in exceptional quality, bearing that familiar vanilla note but in its purest, deepest liquor. Wearing it, I morph into a beagle and spend the day sniffing my wrists with secret abandon. It is that good.

This doesn’t come as a surprise; BDK Parfums, a luxe and once-niche line, is quickly becoming known by perfume buffs for its uncompromising focus on ingredients and for attracting some of the most remarkable talent in the industry. Case in point: its first foray into vanilla, Vanille Leather ($261, BDK Parfums), is a masterpiece by Dominique Ropion (he, of Frederic Malle’s Carnal Flower and Portrait of a Lady fame). It’s a dance between Madagascar vanilla, orange blossom, tuberose, and jasmine.

But if Ropion, at age 70, is working at the height of his powers, there are also younger talents eagerly pushing the needle forward. Perfumer Natalie Gracia-Cetto zeroes in on the blackness of the vanilla pod in Atelier Materi’s Vanille Carbone ($260, Atelier Materi), a scent that bites with black pepper before warming with three varieties of vanilla.

For Jusbox, the trending music-inspired line, Antoine Lie brings ginger, saffron, patchouli, and cedar to an intoxicating vanilla flower in 14Hour Dream ($215, La Jatée Perfumery), an homage to Pink Floyd’s psychedelic rock.

Parisian-favorite Aurelien Guichard, founder and perfumer of Matiere Premiere, hit a runaway bestseller with Vanilla Powder ($320, Matiere Premiere), a gorgeous, if linear, scent focused entirely on three complementary ingredients—Madagascar vanilla absolute, Ecuadorian Palo Santo, and pure coconut powder—all resting on a clean bed of white musks.

This season, Guichard launches his much-anticipated Vanilla Powder Extrait ($420, Matiere Premiere). Stronger in concentration, the extrait also contains tonka bean absolute from Venezuela. This, Guichard tells me, gives the purity of the original a “voluptuous intensity” and, I’d have to say, the very real suggestion of total infatuation. One spray lasted 12 hours on my skin and created a heady aura around me. This is a vanilla that doesn’t hide itself nor the impeccable expense and quality of its materials.

The purity of this mission is true, too, of Les Eaux Primordiales. The up-and-coming house has created an incandescent, solar beauty with Vanille Supermassive ($250, Les Eaux Primordiales).

For those seeking a powdery softness, Cierge de Lune ($245, Aedes) by Aedes de Venustas delivers with a whisper of incense wrapped in notes of suede and energized with pink and black pepper. At the same time, Byredo has reformulated Vanille Antique ($465, Byredo) with an added abundance of tuberose, oud, and cashmere wood.

Trudon, the venerable French company dating back to 1643 and best known for its perfumed candles, nails it with 45° ($340, Trudon), an enveloping and sensual cloud of vanilla, bergamot, honey, and resins by Yann Vasnier, the perfumer behind several of Tom Ford’s bestsellers, including the rum and coffee-infused Vanille Fatale ($300, Sephora).

For those who still want a touch more sugar with their vanilla, the exceptional Bon Parfumeur 402 ($140, Bon Parfumeur), perfectly balances a creamy caramel-vanilla with a dry sandalwood. While bucking the expected, Alia Raza’s Régime des Fleurs’ Green Vanille ($275, Régime des Fleurs) is just short of ripe and only hints at the sweetness to come. The hint of green makes it a four-season scent.

Not so of D.S. & Durga’s bestselling Deep Dark Vanilla ($210, D.S. & Durga), a cold-weather scent that’s masterful in its ability to convey liquor without being boozy and gourmand without an iota of sugar. What it really is is a grown-up, genderless, unsweetened true vanilla that wears intimately, bounces between cozy and erotic, and has sex appeal to spare. Let’s just say, it puts those tins of cupcake frosting back on the shelf where they belong.