I spritzed Sabrina Carpenter’s Cherry Baby fragrance on the way to the gynecologist a couple of weeks ago, my nails clicking on its dark red candy bar plastic shell, “Please Please Please” playing over my headphones, thinking to myself in the late summer heat: You can be a whole new person.
Maybe I wanted a little of Carpenter’s easygoing self-assuredness — a confidence that doesn’t take itself too seriously, doesn’t hold things too tightly. On stage, she’s light on her feet even in sky-high white platform boots; playfulness and sensuality are hers to command and evoke in equal measure, drawing fans in with a smirk and a well-timed wink. In person, she’s warm and funny, quick to joke and put people at ease. Could a spray of perfume siphon off a little of that energy, after a summer that was weird and hot and bratty and, let’s be honest, uncomfortable on a number of levels both personal and societal?
In August, ahead of her no. 1 album Short ‘n Sweet, Carpenter released the third in her Sweet Tooth fragrance series, a “flirty, addictive” scent with cherries, chocolate, red poppies, and peonies. Cherry Baby is assertive, and demands to be recognized; our associate style editor Donya Momenian compared it to a Victoria’s Secret Pink perfume, the kind that filled up a middle school locker room in the late 2000s.
On first spray, I’ll admit, I wasn’t sure if this would be my thing. I’m typically drawn to more spicy, woodsy, leathery scents; I’m a sucker for Glossier You and Le Labo Santal 33, and I’ve recently been enjoying D.S. & DURGA’s Debaser, with its bergamot, fig, and mossy base note. Cherry Baby is syrupy sweet, potent and flirty, and you can smell the alcohol. It does dry down into something softer, and it feels meant for impact, not necessarily long-lasting, in-your-face scent.
The magic really started, however, when I experimented with some fragrance layering. As a base, I liberally applied DedCool’s Xtra Milk (amber, bergamot, and white musk), a new obsession that I’ve been spritzing on everything in my apartment. DedCool calls it “pure comfort” and I can’t say it much better — it smells like that just-got-out-of-a-shower feeling.
Xtra Milk successfully took the edge off Cherry Baby, bringing out the latter fragrance’s base notes of cashmere wood and patchouli elixir. The sweetness wasn’t cloying, it was just right; I felt a bit like the scent equivalent of a strawberries and cream Creme Saver.
As I wore the mix, I could feel myself adapting it into my personality. Carpenter projects this image that is confident but also someone who can laugh at themselves as they learn along the way. I sprayed it and laughed at the full adult man who broke off our friends with benefits arrangement because I asked him to use a condom. I laughed at the stress of my landlord telling me I couldn’t re-sign my lease. I laughed at the gynecologist’s office listening to Short ‘n Sweet, as Carpenter sang about a boy who didn’t know the difference between “there, their, and they are” on “Slim Pickins,” and about the “thoughts that pass through” her.
I liked the idea of letting a thought pass through — let it matter for a second and then release it, or moan and b*tch about it with friends for a night and then wake up and start again. Post pap smear, before heading out into the sunlight, the office assistant called out to me, “By the way, you smell amazing!”
