10 Fruity Perfumes You'll Love

“Fruity” runs from mango with pink sugar to blackberries still on the bush. These ten cover tropical, red, orchard and green fruit. Start with Vilhelm Mango Skin for sweet and tropical, Tom Ford Lost Cherry for something darker, and Diptyque Philosykos if you want the tree as well as the fruit.

Why Are Fruit Notes Built Instead of Extracted?

Because most fruit won’t give up an oil. Citrus peel can be cold-pressed, and blackcurrant buds can be extracted, but squeeze a mango or a strawberry and you get juice, which is mostly water and sugar. So nearly every fruit note in perfume is an accord, put together from the molecules the real fruit gives off.

Those are mostly esters and lactones. Isoamyl acetate smells of banana and pear drops, ethyl butyrate of pineapple, gamma-decalactone of peach, and raspberry ketone of, yes, raspberry. Many are the same flavourings that go into sweets and soft drinks, which is why fruity perfumes can smell edible. What makes one interesting is what the perfumer puts next to the fruit: leaves, wood, spice, or a lot of sugar.

Perfume	The fruit	What’s with it
Vilhelm Mango Skin	Mango, blackberry	Black pepper, orris, pink sugar
Ellis Brooklyn Sun Fruit	Fig	Bergamot, jasmine, cyclamen, vanilla
Tom Ford Lost Cherry	Black and sour cherry	Bitter almond, rose, tonka
Kilian Apple Brandy on the Rocks	Apple	Brandy, an “on the rocks” accord
Kayali Eden Juicy Apple	Red apple, berries	Flowers
YSL Mon Paris	Red berries	Datura, peony, patchouli
Juicy Couture Viva La Juicy	Wild berries, mandarin	Gardenia, caramel, vanilla
Jo Malone Blackberry & Bay	Blackberry	Bay leaf, cedar
Diptyque Philosykos	Fig	Fig leaf, milky sap, wood
Maison Margiela Under the Lemon Trees	Kalamansi lime	Mate, green tea, cardamom

10 Fruity Perfumes

Vilhelm Parfumerie Mango Skin

Mango Skin opens with mango, blackberry and black pepper, then wild orris, black lotus and jasmine, over patchouli, vanilla and pink sugar. The pepper is what keeps it from being a smoothie. Mango has a faintly resinous, almost turpentine edge in real life, and pepper and patchouli pick up on it, so the sweetness has something dark under it. Start here if you want tropical fruit that still smells like perfume.

Check Price on Amazon

Ellis Brooklyn Sun Fruit

Sun Fruit is fresh fig, bergamot, jasmine, cyclamen and vanilla. Ellis Brooklyn calls it a reinvention of the fruity floral, and the fig is what does it: it’s softer and greener than the berries that usually fill this kind of perfume. Vanilla turns it creamy. It’s a beach-holiday perfume, sweeter and more floral than Philosykos.

Check Price on AmazonShop Ellis Brooklyn

Tom Ford Lost Cherry

Lost Cherry is a black cherry accord, bitter almond and sour cherry syrup, then rose, Peru balsam and roasted tonka. Bitter almond is the clever part. Benzaldehyde, the molecule behind almond, is also in cherry stones and cherry flavouring, so the two notes fuse into a liqueur-soaked cherry, closer to kirsch than fruit. Our cherry list has cheaper relatives.

Check Price on AmazonShop Tom Ford

Kilian Apple Brandy on the Rocks

Apple Brandy on the Rocks lists just three things: an “on the rocks” accord, apple and brandy. Sidonie Lancesseur made it for Kilian’s New York shop, and it’s the coolest fruit here, crisp apple over a glassy, iced accord. It’s the one for spring evenings.

Check Price on Amazon

Kayali Eden Juicy Apple

Kayali describes Eden Juicy Apple as crisp, juicy red apples with sweet berries and fresh flowers. Where Kilian’s apple is cold and boozy, this one is a red apple bitten straight off the tree, sweet and loud. It’s the brightest, most playful pick here.

Check Price on Amazon

YSL Mon Paris

Mon Paris is red berries, then datura and peony, over patchouli and white musk. It’s a good example of a style critics have nicknamed “fruitchouli”: bright red fruit over a clean, dry patchouli base. The patchouli gives the berries something to lean on, so it smells grown-up rather than like a body spray. Datura, a white trumpet flower, adds a creamy, heady note.

Check Price on AmazonShop Yves Saint Laurent

Juicy Couture Viva La Juicy

Viva La Juicy is wild berries and mandarin, then gardenia, jasmine and honeysuckle, over caramel, sandalwood and vanilla. It’s fruit dipped in caramel: the berries come first, and then it slowly turns into a dessert. The sweetest and loudest of the ten, and the most fun.

Check Price on AmazonShop Juicy Couture

Jo Malone Blackberry & Bay

Blackberry & Bay pairs tart blackberry with green bay leaves and dry cedar. It’s blackberry-picking in a hedgerow, with the leaves still attached and a bit of scratched skin. One wearer gets wild blackcurrant leaves and citrus more than obvious fruit. Pick it over Mango Skin if bay and cedar appeal more than vanilla and pink sugar.

Check Price on AmazonShop Jo Malone

Diptyque Philosykos

Philosykos (1996) is the whole fig tree: leaves, milky sap, fruit and wood. Fig leaf is green and coconut-milky, the fruit is soft and sweet, and the wood keeps it dry. It’s fruit in a Greek garden in August. This is the Eau de Toilette; the EDP is a separate version. Our fig list has more.

Check Price on AmazonShop Diptyque

Maison Margiela Replica Under the Lemon Trees

Under the Lemon Trees is a kalamansi lime accord, petitgrain and cardamom, then coriander, mate and green tea, over cedar, cistus and musk. Kalamansi is a small Southeast Asian citrus, sour and slightly floral, and with tea and mate it smells like iced tea with a squeeze of lime. The only citrus on the page, and the least sweet.

Check Price on AmazonShop Maison Margiela

More Fruit

For cherries specifically, see the cherry list. The citrus perfumes go further into lemon and grapefruit, and if the sugar in Mango Skin and Viva La Juicy is the appeal, try the sweet perfumes.