The limited annual release of Estée Lauder’s Bronze Goddess Skinscent (£43, 50ml) signals the start of beauty’s own asparagus season. As usual, I plan to binge on it, despite it being in many ways exactly the sort of simple, crowd-pleasing fragrance I’d avoid at any other time of the year. Skinscent’s bright, coconutty, suntan-oily notes – like a sniff of a hot arm after a day at the beach – are arguably basic, but somehow all the lovelier for it. There’s something so celebratory, unpretentious and generically “summer” about Skinscent (not to be confused with the inferior and pricier Bronze Goddess Eau de Parfum) that it seems always to raise smiles and attract compliments.
I love it so much that I wondered if anything else hits the same spot. In a crude but nonetheless joyful sense, Hawaiian Tropic Golden Paradise (£10, 250ml) does. It’s a body spray (pleasingly retro: no one I know has worn body spray since the 1980s) that encapsulates more subtly the delicious smell of Hawaiian Tropic suntan oil, drunken teenage holidays and the smell of your mum’s C&A bikini, without leaving your clothes like a fish-and-chip wrapper. I’ve been inhaling it daily since the bank holiday.
For many of us, summer is a sticky, humid and busy affair in which the rich scent of suntan oil can feel a bit cloying, and in this case I enthusiastically recommend Dolce & Gabbana’s wonderful new Light Blue Italian Zest For Her (£55, 50ml; also in For Him, but this one, at least to my nose, is gender-neutral), which cuts through the clag with the sharp and boozy smell of iced limoncello. Like all citrussy scents, this doesn’t hang around for long – expect to need an afternoon sharpener if you’re going out after work – but while it lasts, it’s glorious (unlike the majority of big-brand lemon fragrances, which almost invariably smell like loo cleaner).
Finally, for the sophisticate (or perhaps someone used to fancier summer holiday destinations), we have Juliette Has A Gun’s Sunny Side Up (£85, 50ml), a warm, woody blend of white flowers, vanilla, sandalwood and more obligatory coconut that initially left me cold, but settled into a lovely, almost creamy, almondy musk that’s seen it graduate from my testing pile to dressing table, via boardroom, beach and beer garden.
