The more you get into fragrances, the more it feels like an addiction. Sure, that Bleu de Chanel was great when you first smelled it, but now it’s become bland and you want something harder. Soon you’ll find yourself wearing ingredients like ambergris (solidified whale vomit) and oud (the mold infected heartwood of the Aquilaria tree) to scratch the itch because the simple stuff just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Okay, maybe you’re not that far gone, and maybe you don’t even wear fragrance. But if you’re considering getting into scents, spring is the perfect time. Spring and summer scents are very approachable with light notes like bergamot, grapefruit and pink pepper. This approachability ensures you won’t send people running, but it also fences you off from what a creative warm weather scent can be.
The thing about spring and summer perfumery is that, chemically, it’s hard to make something interesting that will last on the skin. Most perfume ingredients that last a while are heavy and rich, and become cloying in hot weather. That leaves perfumers with a very small palette.
This homogeneity becomes so horribly blasé. You’ll end up smelling like everyone else, and that ruins the intimate and unique form of self expression fragrance gives you. But amongst the coal and gravel there are some gems. These are my three favorite men’s warm weather fragrances that are truly unique, but still accessible.
Starting with the easiest to love on this list, is Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s Amyris Homme eau de toilette. This smells like bedsheets in a luxury hotel. Opening with Sicilian mandarin and rosemary, there’s a zingy herbaceous accord that keeps this fresh and pleasant. Straying away from the lightness of the opening, the middle brings in coffee, milk chocolate and iris. They’re balanced by a coconut note and the namesake note of amyris, which gives it a slightly resinous and piney feel. It ends with tonka bean — a sweet and earthy note reminiscent of dried tobacco — and oud. There’s such a well tamed richness in this that you can detect immediately, and that makes it so special to wear.
Next is a new scent that I’ve grown to love very fast, being Tom Ford’s Oud Mineralé. Originally released in Tom Ford’s private blend collection, this has transferred to the (slightly) more affordable signature line, and I’m so glad it has. This is the most interesting take on an aquatic scent I’ve smelled, because where most designer aquatics smell like a sanitized idea of the ocean, this one smells like the actual ocean. Read the notes and it may sound unpalatable, but don’t knock it just yet. This is the smell in your hair after swimming in the sea. It’s a piece of soggy driftwood with barnacles and salt crusted on it. It’s the smell of the breeze coming across the water as you wade through a tidepool. It’s sharp and funky but it works. Notes like salt, seagrass and balsam fir bring the vision to life. Even if you don’t end up liking it, it’s still worth a sample just to see how transportive fragrance can be.
Finally, we come to my personal favorite: The eau de toilette version of Hermes’s Terre d’Hermes. Its name, terre, is French for “earth,” and it lives up to that moniker. Imagine an orange peel covered in dirt sitting on a rock baking in the sun. That’s the best way I can describe this scent, and I love that. It’s so unique and it feels old-fashioned and classy while also being avant garde and modern. Most of the notes aren’t that special, but the direction perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena has gone with them is so nuanced. The orange is bitter and rindy. The vetiver is dry and grassy. The pepper, flint and pelargonium in the middle give it an accord that smells like soil or rock. The whole composition feels like the concept of bright sunlight and earth; it’s truly beautiful.
Whether you want to be a less insane Jeremy Fragrance, or just want to smell good this spring and summer, these are all worth checking out. Fair warning, though: These might be the gateway scents that get you fully addicted.
