Spring is about new beginnings in every sense and scent. There is something about the first warm day – when you leave the house without a coat and don’t regret it – that makes everything you wore, sprayed and reached for in winter feel suddenly, completely wrong. Scent is perhaps the most immediate way to mark the shift. The heavy ambers and smoky woods that felt so right in January start to suffocate by April, and we’re all ready for a change.
We’re all for a signature scent, but ten years of the same bottle and even the most beloved fragrance starts to feel like a habit rather than a choice. If you’re ready to spring clean your fragrance shelf and start fresh, we’ve rounded up our absolute favourites for this season. They’re all light and bright, leaning either more floral or citrusy, but there’s no Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue in sight – these are some fabulous fresh releases and boutique brands you won’t find on everyone’s vanity countertops (just yet).
1. Subversive Scents – Wild Horses
This perfume is a mirage. Subversive Scents, a brand created in collaboration with The Rolling Stones, is a newcomer to the market, but the quality feels anything but tentative. Crucially, it sidesteps the usual unisex clichés – no heavy-handed leather or overbearing woods – opting instead for something far more nuanced and confident.
Wild Horses feels like a breath of fresh air. Rose and aquatic top notes might raise eyebrows, but they’re softened beautifully by jasmine, amber, and tonka bean, creating a scent that’s clean yet comforting rather than sharp. It’s subtle, distinctive, and refreshing – like the feeling of slipping into clean sheets, or the first sip of a cold-pressed juice on a warm day. We’re obsessed with Subversive Scents as a brand, and Wild Horses in particular is an easy favourite for spring and summer.
Top Notes: Rose, Aquatic notes
Mid Notes: Jasmine, Peony, Pink Peppercorn, Salty Tears
Base Notes: Musk, Cedarwood, Amber, Tonka Bean
Price: £99 (100ml)
2. Marc Jacobs Daisy Murakami Green
Marc Jacobs and Takashi Murakami – the Japanese contemporary artist behind some of the most iconic Louis Vuitton prints – have joined forces for the first time, and the result is a limited-edition collection worth getting your hands on. Daisy’s iconic bottle has been reimagined across four colourways (yellow, pink, green and blue) each crowned with Murakami’s signature floral motifs, turning it into as much of a collector’s piece as the fragrance itself.
This isn’t your average spring scent. This one is unabashedly sweet, cakey and indulgent, with that signature Marc Jacobs daintiness that’s so endearing and appealing at the same time. Key notes include banana, jasmine and vanilla – essentially a recipe for the most moreish Japanese pancakes laden with whipped cream, spoonfuls of berries and a drizzle of pistachio cream for good measure. A sugar overdose but worth the spiking heart rate.
Top notes: Blue Banana Java Accord, Bergamot Accord, Pink Peppercorn CO2 Orpur
Heart notes: Jasmine Sambac Absolute India Orpur, Vanilla Accord, Banana Blossom Accord
Base notes: Vetiver Des Sables India Orpur, Vetiver Fraction Haiti Orpur, Ambrofix , Sandalwood Accord, Musk (Ambrexolide)
Price: £90 (50ml)
3. Mabelle O’Rama Forbidden Bloom
Mabelle O’Rama is a London-based independent studio founded by Lebanese-British perfumer Mabelle Abi Ramia – hand-crafting small-batch artisan fragrances since 2022, and already a two-time Fragrance Foundation UK Awards finalist for this very fragrance.
Forbidden Bloom is inspired by Astarte, the Phoenician goddess with a rebellious spirit, and built around gardenia and frangipani at its heart. Definitely a luxury scent, but wears nothing like most fragrances at this price point, which are often either outdated or outlandish. Instead, it’s beautifully fresh and subtle with notes of pear and peach, plus the musk and coffee grounding (no pun intended) these fresh, spring flavours. An assured, considered fragrance that will take you easily from day to evening.
Notes: Pear, Peach, Frangipani, Gardenia, Coffee, Cedarwood, Ambergris and Musk.
Price: £130, 50ml
4. Balmain Destin De Balmain
Balmain Destin de Balmain isn’t just another fruity floral launch – it’s a strategic return to mainstream, statement fragrance for the house. Created by perfumer Quentin Bisch, it’s built around what Balmain calls a “neon-saturated” strawberry – a fruity note that’s deliberately vivid and amplified; sharpened with pink pepper and layered with peony, giving it that slightly diffused sweetness. Let’s say a poetic, adorned version of the berry.
What we appreciate about the fragrance is that it’s far from a light, fleeting fruity floral; it’s anchored with a proper woody-musky base that gives it that expensive, lingering warmth. The result is something that opens bright and playful but quickly settles into a smoother, more grounded silhouette – less girlish, more polished and wearable.
Top notes: Natural Strawberry
Heart notes: Peony Accord
Base notes: Sandalwood Accord
Price: £130, 100ml
5. Eight & Bob Giardino Dell’Anima
Eight & Bob is a heritage fragrance house with one of perfumery’s better origin stories – founded by Parisian aristocrat Albert Fouquet in the early 20th century, whose creations were once a private indulgence shared with a young John F. Kennedy. Il Giardino Dell’Anima – the Garden of the Soul – is part of the Fouquet Collection, inspired by Ravello on the Amalfi Coast, where Fouquet would retreat each year and where, after an open-air concert in the gardens one evening, he was moved to create this fragrance.
It wears exactly as that story suggests – luminous, warm and unhurried, with pistachio cream giving it a creamy, gourmand and deeply addictive feel. Not a fresh spring scent in the conventional sense – richer and more sensual than that – but one that literally bottles the feeling of a sun-kissed Italian evening.
Top notes: Mandarin
Heart notes: Jasmine
Base notes: Pistachio
Price: £196, 100ml
6. AllSaints Sunset Riot Intense
AllSaints has been making fragrances since 2018, rooted in the same east London grit and industrial attitude as the clothing. Sunset Riot Intense is an amplified version of one of their most loved originals – same DNA but more depth, projection, and staying power.
This unisex fragrance features pink pepper and night-blooming jasmine, but make no mistake, this is cedarwood and amber resin territory by the dry-down. Dense, sensual and unashamedly so. Think less Sunday afternoon in the park, more Friday night with nowhere to be until 2am. The leather-wrapped bottle is a beautoful detail.
Top notes: Mandarin Leaves, Pink Pepper, Wild Freesia
Mid notes: Orange Flower, Night Blooming Jasmine, Woodland Moss
Base notes: Cedarwood, Amber Resin, Sueded Musks
Price: £45 (30ml); £80 (100ml)
7. Gucci Flora Gorgeous Gardenia Intense
The Flora line has been Gucci’s most reliably crowd-pleasing fragrance family for years – each iteration a slightly different take on the same sweet, feminine DNA. Gorgeous Gardenia Intense is the most recent addition and, arguably, the most accomplished. Where the original Gorgeous Gardenia was pretty but forgettable, this one has real depth and staying power.
The sweetness is there – mandarin opens it with a juicy brightness – but it never becomes sickly. The gardenia accord at the heart is enriched with hedione, a jasmine-derived molecule that gives the whole composition an enveloping warmth you’ll find yourself returning to all day. Sandalwood in the base grounds it with a creamy, woody finish, resulting in a layered, elegant feminine fragrance.
Top notes: Mandarin Essence
Heart notes: Jasmine Extract & Tuberose
Base notes: Sandalwood Essence
Price: £116 (100ml), £63.99 (50ml), £59.20 (30ml)
8. Sabrina Carpenter Lemon Pie
The Sweet Tooth family has recently welcomed a new member. Again, Sabrina Carpenter has done what we didn’t know we needed and delivered a gourmand that reads less like a perfume and more like a dessert menu of our dreams. This time, dressed for spring.
At £40, Lemon Pie is the most affordable pick on this list, but don’t let that fool you – the composition is genuinely delicious, sweet and zesty in equal measure, with enough complexity from the tonka bean and condensed milk to stop it reading as a one-note sugar rush. The Marc Jacobs Daisy Murakami Green was the liquid form of Japanese pancakes drenched in cream, and this one is – you may guess – the theatrical, prop-like lemon pie sitting on the counter of an American roadside diner. Just give us a fork already.
Top notes: Italian Bergamot, Candied Lemon Zest, Sugar Crystals
Mid notes: Limoncello, Meringue, Condensed milk
Base notes: Graham Cracker Crust, Vanilla Whipped Cream, Tonka Bean
Price: £26.99 (30ml); £39.99 (75ml)
9. Moschino Toy Yummy
You can’t help but gravitate towards those Moschino bear-shaped bottles – they are fragrance A-Listers at this point. The Toy family first launched in 2014 and has grown into a full line-up of playful scents, with recent additions like Bubble Gum and Yummy for this year’s spring and summer. Yummy, despite the name, is anything but sweet – it’s a burst of freshness, by far the most citrus-forward fragrance we’ve tried.
Most citrus-forward fragrances lean on lemon for the brightness, but Yummy goes Latin America for the lime instead, and the distinction is actually quite clear. Much like a shot of pure lime juice – open, acidic, very spring-like, but with some lovely floral and pepper notes to give it more structure (and keep it from smelling like surface spray). It’s a zesty, energising fragrance that’s truly uplifting.
Top notes: Yellow mandarin, bergamot, incense
Heart notes: Geranium, sambac jasmine, timut pepper, black pepper
Base notes: Bulgarian rose, Haitian vetiver, serenolide
Price: £91 (100ml)
10. Floral Street Enchanted Masquerade
We had the Floral Street x Bridgerton pegged as the fragrance of the season here, and it’s proved us right. Floral Street’s Enchanted Masquerade, which launched in late January to coincide with the launch of the season 4 of Bridgerton, is a true fruity meets festive scent.
Very pear-forward, but with some notes of jasmine, gardenia and rose to inject some romance and depth into what could otherwise feel a little one-dimensional. It’s clearly the perfect spring scent: sweet but not too sweet, floral but not too floral, elevated and polished but still wearable. The bottle is obviously gorgeous and very much one to keep on display in your bathroom.
Top notes: Mandarin Spanish Essential Oil, Green Hazelnut, Pink Pepper Austrailia Extract, Juicy Pear
Heart notes: Gardenia, Jasmine Petals, Rose Grasse Absolute
Base notes: Cedarwood Texas Essential Oil, Patchouli, Skin Musks
Price: £62.40 (50ml)
*Prices correct at the time of writing
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