As a perfume expert, I’ve tested hundreds of summer fragrances—but *this* is the most enticing holiday fragrance I’ve sniffed

As soon as the sun starts shining, there is a shift in my fragrance choices. Most likely an attempt to channel my favourite season in as many ways as possible, out are my usual clean powdery scents and in roll the best summer perfumes and holiday fragrances.

Over the years, I’ve developed a few go-to summer perfumes whose tell-tale scents fill me with nostalgia for summers past, like Nuxe’s Delicious Fragrant Water and Aerin’s Mediterranean Honeysuckle. Last year however, a new perfume entered the rotation, and I’m not trying to be dramatic when I say, it may just be the most enticing summer scent I’ve come across so far. If you haven’t tried Kilian’s Sunkissed Goddess before now, it’s definitely time you did.

Kilian Sunkissed Goddess Eau de Parfum

Launched last year as a limited edition fragrance, Sunkissed Goddess is summer bottled. With notes of neroli, bergamot and soft tiare flower, it’s both zesty and delicate in equal measure. As it sits on the skin, however, the creamy base notes take hold, including coconut and vanilla as well as sweet guaiac wood. It’s these notes that make me utterly obsessed with this fragrance as they take on an almost sun cream-like quality, which envelopes the skin incomforting creaminess.

This is a solar scent that doesn’t attempt to flood you with its vibrancy, but rather wraps you up in it. It’s for spritzing on lazy summer days on sunwarmed skin, or cosy nights as you watch the sun set in the distance with no place else to be. It’s a fragrance that feels like a love letter to summer as opposed to a literal representation of it, and it’s for that reason, I can’t get enough.

As I mentioned, Sunkissed Goddess was originally launched in 2024 as a limited edition offering by the French fragrance house, however, it seems I’m not the only one who couldn’t get enough. This year, they announced Sunkissed Goddess would be making its way into the permanent Kilian collection, meaning, not only can you shop it year-round for winter sun breaks or when you want to transport yourself back to sunnier times, but there’s also no need to ration existing bottles. As someone who’s been doing exactly that for months now, this is very good news, so if you see me in the coming weeks and wonder what fragrance I’m wearing, you can rest assured it’ll be Kilian’s Sunkissed Goddess.