Key Takeaways
- Raspberry fragrances are trending, with houses like YSL Beauty, Fulton & Roark, and Kate Spade offering fresh, nuanced takes on the beloved fruity note.
- Today’s raspberry scents avoid getting too syrupy-sweet with the help of florals, musks, and even spices, and the result couldn’t be more alluring.
Think back to your teenage years, when the sweeter the perfume, the better it was. Bold, fruity scents, such as strawberry and raspberry, were on heavy rotation. And while raspberry notes have always evoked a juicy, candy-like appeal, the fruity scent is making a comeback for a second act, with far more modern and sophisticated iterations than ever before.
Raspberry fragrances are a fun way to wear something beautiful, sweet, and sheer without being overly saccharine, strong, or too syrupy. Blending the note with florals, greens, and even musks gives the typical raspberry scent a punch of brightness, instantly elevating it from purely nostalgic to refined while remaining familiar to the senses.
As gourmand scents continue their renaissance, consider raspberry fragrances to be a standout semi-sweet counterpart that’s equal parts memory-soaked and cool. Ahead, we dive into the fruity scent’s sophisticated new era, complete with 9 standout fragrances that feature the note.
Behind the Note
According to Fulton & Roark co-founder Kevin Keller, raspberry fragrances are almost always a combination of natural and synthetic ingredients, since distilling raspberries would damage much of what he says makes the scent distinct. To create the note, perfumers use a mix of fruit esters, ionones, musks, and sometimes natural florals to create a realistic raspberry fragrance.
Within the raspberry note, there’s a bright, natural sweetness, making it more than just a simple fruit scent. “One of the reasons I like working with raspberry is because it makes a strong statement in many different ways, depending on what you combine it with,” says Demeter Fragrance Library chief perfumer Mark Crames. “It can be sharp or tart, and because that can be managed in degrees, raspberry blends beautifully with almost any other fruit, many spices, and most green or ozone notes. It’s a very flexible material.”
To prevent the sweetness wrapped into raspberry fragrances from reading as juvenile, Keller says that highlighting the fruit’s mineral elements makes it feel more sophisticated. “While raspberry might be a callback, with our fragrances, we leaned into the minerality of the berry, with less of the elements that can be perceived as cloying,” Keller shares.
And if you think raspberry perfumes are just for wearing in the summer, that’s not necessarily the case. As Keller explains, part of the magic of fragrance is that it creates a feeling and sense you can evoke whenever and wherever: “I fully support wearing raspberry in February, or styrax in July. I have a feeling I’m not alone in that.”
Why It’s Trending
Keller believes one reason why raspberry fragrances are trending is that they evoke nostalgia. “Millennials, in particular, remember raspberry notes from their middle and high school days,” he says. “I think there’s an element of comfort that comes with the scent.”
Raspberry scents are also going viral, a sign that the note won’t be slowing down or fading away any time soon. While Crames says that gourmands have been having their day for a few years now, it’s not surprising that both perfumers and consumers are looking for ways to experiment with atypical notes. “The flexibility of raspberry, and its ability to be used as fruity, sweet, or tart, creates a lot of options,” he explains.