The Sweet Smell of Success is very much its own reward – but it’s those of us who broke all our New Year Resolutions before Twelfth Night that need a dopamine boost in perfume form.
January never was a time for ambition. It’s a time for hibernating, eating potatoes and wearing multiple pairs of socks. As we step into February, I’m so goblin-core I’m now the end-boss in a local Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
Here are the perfumes to scent yourself with when optimism is slow to load and it feels like everything else is falling apart.
Resolution: Take Work More Seriously
Abandoned: 2nd January
You had truly intended that the first quarter of 2026 would see you fake it to make it: embracing the corporate world via dull posts and fawning comments on LinkedIn, and putting in unnecessary hours at work so that your overlords would see you as a keen team-player. But that’s not you – you live for the weekend, and the week off.
Le Grand Jeu is pure escapism. A lush white floral bathed in warm coconut milk and a delicious skin-lacquer of vanilla. There is a luxurious, sun-warmed skin quality here, coconut cream melting on bronzed shoulders blooming with gardenia, tuberose and glossy tiaré.
This is the fragrance for anyone astral projecting their way through Q1, choosing to smell like their best-life, tits-out beach self. Bold, sensual and gloriously over the top, Le Grand Jeu is vacation mode with no apologies.
Resolution: Be Financially Responsible
Abandoned: 3rd January
Was 2026 the year you vowed to become a strong, responsible adult: saving money and making sensible choices? One month in, and you’re not doing any of those things. It was way too January for that!
The aggressive coziness of Pas de Chat is what to wear when you want to channel the energy of a creature that sleeps 18 hours a day, contributes nothing to rent and is still the most beloved thing in the house.
Plush kitten-fur textures, powdered warmth and a quietly purring amber glow make Pas de Chat the perfect choice for anyone embracing their inner house cat this winter. Soft, perfumed and entirely uninterested in human expectations, it’s a fragrance that embraces the irresistible urge to knock a glass of water off a table just to see it fall.
Resolution: Get Fit
Abandoned: 5th January
Idìlios is the vow to run a marathon quietly postponed until 2027, and the persuasive argument that gentleness sometimes looks like cancelling plans so that you may stay home wearing sweatpants. Idìlios is the safe space where you are seen and where you are loved.
A creamy mix of peach, osmanthus and three different vanilla extractions creates a soft glow and gives the composition a sweetness that feels like a hug from a friend who assures you it’s okay to have that second (large) glass of wine. Milky, musky and gently radiant, Idìlios forgives everything, including the gym membership you’re about to ignore for the next eleven months.
Resolution: Go Outside More This Year
Abandoned: 11th January
You believed that this year you would conquer the Great Outdoors: achieving your steps quota and your daily allocation of Vitamin D before starting the working day. And yet, throughout January you hit the snooze button instead of the streets. Never mind…
Fantôme de Maules is what you wear when your body hasn’t seen daylight since October and your shadow has started developing a personality of its own. A ghostly forest aura for the chronically indoors, bedrotting with conviction, abandoning your Vitamin D dreams and embracing a tasteful Victorian pallor, with just enough cabin fever to start seeing faces in the wallpaper.
Resolution: Reinvent Yourself
Abandoned: 18th January
Vanille Havane is the "New Year, New Me™" scent for a personal rebrand announced before you’ve even decided which personality you’ll be inhabiting.
Smoky vanilla, cocoa, and tobacco billow around you like stage fog for a transformation montage that never quite materialises. It creates a lone-wolf mystique that was fully vetted by Fragrantica members.
Dramatic, seductive, and more tenacious than that bad habit you keep calling growth, Vanille Havane is the fragrance you wear to scream into your Live, Laugh, Love throw pillow for another year of just being yourself.
Resolution: Read a Book a Week
Abandoned: 22nd January
Did you begin January with a list of worthy tomes to read, classic films to watch, and following the Chess course on Duolingo? Easy to resolve to become an intellectual powerhouse, but hard to put the hours in when there’s so much good TV to watch and a pile of spicy fantasy to read.
So what if you didn’t develop the austere, angular mind (and matching cheekbones) of Samuel Beckett? Your cotton-candy imagination and dimpled cheeks are every bit as beautiful!
Milky Dragon is the comfort choice for anyone who loves creamy textures, quiet sweetness and a slightly mystical, tea-infused aura. Built around the creamy, steamed-milk warmth of milky oolong tea, it’s a cozy cloud of velvety lactones, gently toasted hazelnut, and the soft-focus glow of cashmeran that clings to skin like your favourite jumper. Soothing, modern and subtly addictive, Milky Dragon is a winter cocoon with a dragon skin shimmer beneath the surface.
Whatever resolution you quietly swept under the rug this year, the easiest one to keep is simply to be gentle with yourself and with anyone else crawling through winter. The rest can wait.