Somewhere between Tom Ford quietly turning Lost Cherry into one of the most bootlegged fragrances of the last decade, and every shelf from Sephora to your nearest mall kiosk following suit, cherry became the note that ate the entire perfume aisle. It doesn’t behave like an actual cherry so much as a memory of one—boozy, jammy, occasionally smoked, verging on cough syrup in the best possible way. Where vanilla spent years convincing everyone that smelling like dessert was a personality trait, cherry has quietly taken over the job, at every price point going.
Not every fragrance on this list is doing the same version of cherry, though, and it’s worth knowing which lane you’re shopping in before you commit. Tom Ford, Kayali, Carolina Herrera, and Yves Saint Laurent treat cherry as a fruit note—dark, syrupy, sometimes smoked, built to smell like something you’d want to bite. Banana Republic and Fine’ry do a lighter version of the same idea.
Budgets here run from the price of an expensive cup of coffee to a flight ticket for that weekend getaway, so whether you’re after the smoky original or something you can wear to your desk without alarming your colleagues, there’s a cherry fragrance below built for it. Here’s our pick of the ripest.
