The trees let go oftheir rich green for burnt orange and yellow. The warm rays of sun begin to fizzle out. The air sharpens with a cold that banishes any remaining summer daydreams.
Fall and winter are my favorite seasons fashion-wise because of the extended selection of clothing colder weather allows. And, as a counterpart, the palette of fragrances you can wear expands with richer and deeper compositions made to warm and comfort, as would a fireplace, or a hot cup of tea. Just as it is in the world of clothing though, the world of fragrance is engorged with lots of overpriced nothing. To help any prospective buyers, here you will find a handful of fragrances perfect for fall as per my and other UO students’ recommendations.
Fashion’s everyday function is to turn you inside out in self expression. Wearing fragrance turns your expression into a multisensory experience, and its invisibility to the most trusted of our five senses gives it an inimitable allure.
Parfums de Marly Layton: Top notes: Apple, lavender, bergamot and mandarin orange. Mid notes: geranium, violet and jasmine. Base notes: vanilla, cardamom, sandalwood, pepper, guaiac wood and patchouli.
In the fall, many people turn to things like warm colors and wool sweaters to match the feeling of the season, and it’s easy to do the same with fragrances, especially with something like Parfums de Marly’s Layton. Layton comes in at a whopping $365 for 125 milliliters, so it better be damn good, and it is.
Layton is warm, spicy and woody. The blend is velvet smooth with each note individually identifiable if you look for it, but with none jutting out and ruining this olfactory balancing act. Layton opens with – among other things – apple and lavender that give it a freshness that’s more akin to the air of a fall morning than a summer post-swim shower. Pepper, guaiac wood (a woody note that smells vanillic, balsamic, leathery and tar-like) vanilla, cardamom and sandalwood develop in the base, giving Layton its strong fall DNA. This is the tempting scent of caramel apples at the pumpkin patch, the first bite of homemade apple pie, the dirty chai in your hand as you walk to class. Stupid expensive, but stupid good.
Prada Luna Rossa Black: Top note: bergamot. Mid Notes: angelica and patchouli. Base notes: coumarin, amber and musk.
Next up is Prada’s Luna Rossa Black. Cheaper in comparison to Layton but still expensive with a 101 milliliter bottle costing $140. Luna Rossa Black is dark, soft, modern and mysterious. Imagine if Dracula lived in our time in a sterile, modern penthouse in New York City and had a secret Tumblr blog where he posted poems about his victims. This is the fragrance he’d wear while writing them.
It’s composition is simple consisting only of bergamot at the top, angelica (a musky and sweet herbal note) and patchouli in the middle, with coumarin (a synthetic aroma-chemical reminiscent of dried or caramelized fruits and herbs), amber and musk at the base. If you want a unique and contemporary fall fragrance, this is the one.
L’Occitane Eav Des Bavx: Top notes: Cardamom and pink pepper. Mid Notes: Cypress and incense. Base Notes: Vanilla and tonka bean.
Making our way into some more reasonably priced options, we have L’Occitane’s Eav Des Bavx, which retails for $82 for a 75 milliliter bottle. Eav Des Bavx is an interesting fragrance because it has all the ingredients of a warm and cozy scent, but it somehow manages to be headstrong and laconic. That’s not to say it’s overly rough or unpleasant. The blend is smooth, and it has a fantastic vanilla note in the base that feels like you’re sniffing the real thing. However, its notes of pink pepper, cypress and incense are colder and textured. It’s what I imagine a medieval church would smell like during an autumn feast. It’s somehow warm and cold at the same time, and it perfectly embodies the feeling of the impending winter.
Lalique Encre Noire: Top note: Cypress. Mid note: Vetiver. Base notes: Cashmere wood and musk.
Finally, we have Lalique’s Encre Noire which retails at $129 for 100 milliliters, but you can almost always find it on Fragrance Net or FragranceX (99% of my fragrance purchases come from these two sites) for around $30. These sites are so cheap because they fall within the fragrance grey market which would take too long to explain, but if you’re interested, this article sums it up. It almost feels illegal (it’s not) that you can spend so little and get something so good, because Encre Noire feels like it should cost as much as Layton. Recommended to me by Will Anderson, a UO student, Encre Noire is dark and gothic. Led by cypress and vetiver, “it smells like nighttime in autumn, the sharpness of the air, and leaves dying in the mud,” Anderson said.
Thankful that I’m not the only one in this school possessed by whatever deranged deity inhabits Jeremy Fragrance, I heard some more recommendations from other students for their favorite fall fragrances.
More student recommendations:
Ari Lapides’ signature scent is Maison Margiela’s Jazz Club from their Replica line, which makes fragrances inspired by specific settings or feelings. Lapides assured me that the name suits it well, and described it as “smoky, boozy and warm.” I remember sampling Jazz Club once, and immediately wanting to wear a tuxedo and smoke a cigar, which I’d never done or wanted to do before (still haven’t unfortunately). With notes of tobacco leaf and rum, Jazz Club has a warming effect that could only be outshined by a ski resort’s fireplace.
Another suggestion I fully endorse is Comme des Garçon’s Wonderwood, recommended to me by Ethan Ludy. Wonderwood is, as the name suggests, heavy on wood notes featuring oud, sandalwood, and cedar. It reminds me of being a child and sitting in one of the aged wooden trailers pulled by tractors at a pumpkin patch. Ludy said it makes him think of cold fall mornings and the feeling of walking around trying to stay warm.
Remember that scent is subjective and what someone else may swear by may make you gag, so always sample before you buy. These are just my superstars, but there are endless options out there if you’re still looking for your fall signature.