Vanilla's played out: 8 cherry scents to switch to
Lancôme's new cherry-and-oud launch settled it: this fall doesn't smell like vanilla. Which cherry perfume to buy — and where the cheap Lost Cherry dupe is.
On August 20 Martha Stewart called Lancôme's new La Vie est Belle Very Cherry a scent you can't ignore, and within days Page Six, InStyle and People had all picked it up. No accident: vanilla gourmands have blurred into one face, and cherry gives you the same sweetness with a sour, bitter edge. Below, eight cherries from Tom Ford to Zara: which one is boozy, which is almond, which is dessert, and how long each one lasts.
Cherry in a bottle comes in three kinds, and that's not marketing. Boozy — berry in cognac with a curl of smoke, the way Lost Cherry does it. Almond-pit cherry rides on benzaldehyde, the molecule that smells of marzipan, so it reads like a chocolate-covered cherry rather than an orchard. Dessert — syrup and vanilla, the easiest and the safest. Work out which one is yours before you pay for a bottle.
Lost Cherry, minus the price tag
Budget cherries lose to Tom Ford not on the smell but on the first twenty minutes: the opening is sharper and boozier, the almond sweeter. An hour in on skin, the gap between Lush Cherry and the original all but disappears — note for note it's the same kit, benzaldehyde and tonka. If you're wearing it for yourself and not for a fragrance club, buy the clone and don't overthink it.
Cherry is vanilla that finally learned to say no.