Vanilla Perfumes Are Bringing All The Nostalgic Feels To Fragrance In 2023

Vanilla may be the scent profile of our collective innocence, but the history of the scent is anything but bland. Not only is the spice a suspected aphrodisiac, but the ingredient was also so prevalent in love spells during the medieval era that it was banned from sale in Europe at the time, per Allure. Gabriela Cherlariu, a senior perfumer at Firmenich, told Bustle that vanilla was originally discovered in Mexico and arrived in Europe in the early 1500s. Since then, the scent has been the foundation of many fragrances, gaining peak popularity in the early 1990s.

According to The Smell Report, vanilla’s long association with warmth, softness, and purity made its post-1980s popularity make sense. Society’s embracing of vanilla, just like 1990s fashion, was their way of overcorrecting the overpowering masculinity of the 1980s.

The first gourmand perfume to soak the public consciousness was Thierry Mugler’s Angel, available through Sephora, whose star-shaped blue bottle adorned the dresser tops of many friends’ mothers of our childhoods, per Allure. With praline, patchouli, and bergamot notes, Angel and scents like it brought warm spice to the end of the century. The scent is described as heavy and heady — one that Bee Sharpio, founder of Ellis Brooklyn, told Allure was a perfume that “you didn’t wear, it wore you.”

The vanilla perfumes popular today are more about balance, says Bustle, with scent profiles that are equal parts timeless and complex.