Friends often ask me what perfumes are appropriate for...CHILDREN! Call me old fashioned, but I don't want to smell a child wearing Kouros (the shock...like seeing a six-year-old boy sporting a handle-bar moustache) or Chanel No. 5 (as surreal an experience as any episode of Toddlers & Tiaras). Colognes for children should be light, simple, unobtrusive, but still have some lasting power (otherwise the child is likely to reapply constantly). Oh, and children's colognes should be inexpensive (I bet they'll leave their perfume in the car on a hot day or lose it).
I started keeping a perfume notebook a few years ago, and I just added Fragonard Jasmin1 to my list of fragrances appropriate for young, female perfume lovers. Jasmin smells like a "play perfume"...in the same category of playtime luxuries as plastic "diamond" rings and "pearl" necklaces. Jasmin is overtly artificial smelling — from start to end; Fragonard's PR materials state Jasmin contains jasmines from Egypt, India and France (if so, they're made to SMELL like they're from a lab in New Jersey).
Jasmin commences with jasmine candy and a hint of green-tinged citrus; the jasmine turns a bit musky in mid-development (this is pre-school musk, not sultry or sexy musk!) and then, almost immediately, sugary FRUIT comes to the fore (not the promised apricot I was hoping for, but a colorless, sweet fruit aroma). That's it: not too much, not too little — just right (for a child).
Fragonard Jasmin comes in a cute bottle that will fit nicely in your little girl's vinyl purse and best of all: it's $25 for a 50 ml Eau de Toilette.
Other options for children interested in perfume (let THEM ask for perfume, don't foist a bottle on them) are Demeter Fragrance Library scents ($20 and under), inexpensive (delicate-smelling) soliflores or classic Eaux de Cologne. Of course, sun and perfume on young skin may not be a great match, especially for children with allergies (in those instances, why not offer a fancy spray bottle filled with distilled water and encourage your child's imagination?) Tip: only give a perfume you can abide to children; having to smell a hated perfume on dolls, stuffed animals, clothes, sheets and furniture is like having Toy Story on a continuous loop in the living room! And a final note: don't let a too-young child tote around a glass bottle...there ARE limits to the age a child should use "perfume." When children DO start wearing cologne, be a kind teacher: tell them where to spray fragrance (the face? not good!; the family dog or cat: no), how much to spray (a little goes a LONG way); when not to wear perfume (at school; you don't want to annoy a teacher or fellow-student). Children should not be encouraged to "play sales people at Macy's" either; don't create a child that sprays every animal and person in range!
Please share your opinions on children and fragrance. I'm truly interested in knowing if you have a child who loves perfume. What do they wear? How young were they when they wanted perfume? How young is too young for fragrance?
1. Listed notes: bergamot, petitgrain, jasmine, apricot, amber.
Note: top image is from Afternoon Tea: Rhymes for Children. by J. G. Sowerby and H. H. Emmerson, [altered] via Wikimedia Commons.
I started wearing Joy when I was three, so obviously I think jasmine is an excellent choice for a beginning perfumista! (But your Fragonard is certainly a better option)
I remember also liking hyacinth and violet when I was a little girl. Avon used to carry light delicate scents perfect for young girls, but I”m not sure if they still do. (Is Avon even around still?) I wouldn’t have thought about it, but a soft apricot note would also be just about perfect for a young miss starting down the rabbit hole.
I don’t think any age is to young for a little perfume if, as you point out, it is the child’s genuine desire, and not just the parent projecting.
Jolie…I bet Avon got lots of girls started on perfume…remember the crazy array of bottles?
When I was a little girl I had some sort of solid “vase of flowers” plastic fragrance compact from Avon. I have no memory of how it smelled, but I liked to smush the solid compact around.
Ann: I would do the same with my sister’s solid “perfumes”…fascinating texture. Imagine the germs!
Were there germs around when we were kids, lol? How did we survive without sticky alcohol gel and touchless hand washing?
I remember wearing Avon’s Sweet Honesty, Love’s Baby Soft and Jean Nate when I was pre-teen.
Longlegs…Jean Nate … I don’t think I’ve ever smelled that…crazy!
I don’t have a problem with little kids wearing perfume if it doesn’t bother allergies and they enjoy it. An option for little ones is orange blossom or rosewater, since they are safe to ingest and don’t last long.
I think my first perfume that wasn’t pinched from the liquor cabinet was probably a Sanrio mini bottle of Little Twinstars, which I still have, and contains a vaguely floral/citrus cologne (it’s still full because the splash opening is too tiny to get more than a drop out with vigorous shaking). I loved scented things, especially a special edition Polly Pocket? plastic horse pendant that smelled like honeysuckle, and was constantly in Mom’s 4711.
My first “real” perfume was Avon’s Sweet Honesty, which was also in a splash bottle so no fear of my spraying anyone. I’m pretty sure my parents were tired of finding weird sludge in jars (the product of my early tincturing attempts with swimming pool water and ginger blooms), and were thrilled that I wanted to smell nice since I was often covered in mud. I also used to spend entire afternoons cramming citrus blossoms into my little denim purse, which I’m sure Dad didn’t appreciate since the trees were supposed to fruit, where they would smell nice for a day or so until they started to mold 🙁 I can also recall dissolving those violet candies in water in an attempt to make very sticky and unpleasant perfume.
Are kids less careful these days? I had quite a lot of delicate glass things and knew better than to toss them around, but I guess it depends on the child.
I would have gone nuts if Demeter had been around in those days. Every penny of my allowance would have gone toward the Hello Kitty perfume and the soliflores to experiment with.
Mikas…love your violet perfume ‘recipe!’ Ha! And good ideas about culinary orange blossom and rose waters.
My nieces were about 5 and 3 when they wanted perfume for “dress-up” games – I gave them Pacifica rollerballs of French Lilac and a Jasmine (thinking that they were less likely to over-apply with a rollerball).
Bastet…great ideas, especially the rollerball options.
A perfume solid would be nice too. I wasn’t a huge fan of Harajuku Lovers, but I did have to buy the Solid Perfume Coffret because of sheer cuteness.
AnniaA…my little sister would wear solid perfumes as a child…purchased at the Dollar Store…they smelled like ChapStik! And would stain her skin and clothes. those were the days.
Neither of my parents were big into scent, so like most other things in life as child I turned to my grandmother, who spoiled me by letting pick out Drakkar Noir as my first scent and bought me a tiny bottle! (And believe me I wore that to school and probably reeked!)
I also you used to love to spray on my grandmother’s CK Obsession and Passion by Elizabeth Taylor and my grandfathers Safari. I was a room spritzer too!
Chandler…two habits born at once: perfume and home fragrance!
I’ve always thought violet was a very childlike scent. Is there a pacifica violet? There are some cheap solid perfumes on etsy these days, those would work too. Also samples. I was obsessed with anything small when I was young, so samples or minis fascinated me. Remember those tiny lipsticks they used to give out at the makeup counter? Those were the bomb.
Desirae…don’t think Pacifica has a violet…they need one.
Agree that solids & rollerballs would be appropriate. Didn’t Bvlgari have a Petits et Mamans frag…maybe L’Occitane too for that matter. The latter would probably be more reasonably priced.
Gg…plus L’Occitane has tiny bottles of fragrance sometimes in their main lines.
I have a very soft spot for Fragonard as their stuff is so reasonably priced and pleasant to wear. Another fragrance in their collection that would be great for any child is their Fleur d’Oranger. Very cheap and simple and nice.
I think a lot of colognes are wonderful for children. Cologne du Bien-Etre, Eau de Lalique, 4711. Parfums de Nicolaï used to have great fragrance called Petit Ange. It’s a floral cologne fragrance with a hint of lilac. I use it on my pillows from time to time.
As a small child I used to love my mother’s L’Air du Temps, and remember not at all enjoying her Schiaparelli Shocking. I would love to smell the latter now. But it’s long gone.
Sharing that very soft spot for Fragonard, and I think their Fleur d’Oranger is nice, and this jasmin also, especially the soap that comes with it. It is just a house with Grasse roots and standing its own amidst the giants of perfume industry. And run by three sisters, a good family business.
Hamamelis: Molinard used to have a great “simple” line too…
Hi Kevin, not any more? After posting I realised I gave one of my nieces a mini set of Fragonard’s naturals once. Big hit!
That PdN sounds really nice.
I agree with 4711….
Austenfan…used to really enjoy many Fragonard soaps…never see them in the US anymore.
My first real fragrance that I remember having/wanting was Love’s Lemon Soft (my older sister got the pink Baby Soft). Then Chantilly handmedown from my mom, and on and on. Kids and fragrance are a weird combo, lest anyone who remembers my Muguet des Bois/Kidnapper story….. 😉
My daughter who is 7 likes to look at my fragrances, and she’ll say: what are you going to pick today? And when she tries to smell what I’ve sprayed on my wrist (after it airs out a bit), she always says: MMmmm – you smell like berries. Or MMmmmm- that smells good. It smells like bubblegum.
Right now, anything that smells good to her only smells like berries or bubblegum. I let her have a very old empty bottle of Jardins de Bagatelle to put on her dresser. But she mostly plays with some very age appropriate scented glitter gel that smells like….. berries. It’s blue.
Oh, the kidnapping story – you put MdB on a handkerchief and used it like “chloroform,” right? We probably read a lot of the same books…
Yep. The smell of LOTV made me sick for many years after that…. I think it was my older sister’s idea anyway.
Anns: hahahaha! Berries and Bubblegum…could be a hit!
Love’s Rain! And Jean Nate…but Rain was my favorite…LOTV…
I have a vague memory that my French friend had a Guerlain baby perfume back in the 1990s – something like Petit Guerlain, if that rings a bell? Her daughter was around three at the time.
I wish I had been a kid who loved the Little Prince perfume range (if it were around then). I’v never smelled them but the bottles are very nice! However, I was a kid who either had her nose in a book or was fighting with boys. It would never have occurred to me to contemplate a smell…
I remember playing Scientist as a child with a boy whose parents were having dinner with my parents. We poured an entire bottle of Moon Drops body lotion into the “batch” (i.e., the bathroom sink), along with other “scientific” items from the medicine and cosmetics bag.
Fortunately, for my mother’s “prestige scents” It never occurred to us to play “Macy’s Sales Associate.” Actually, we probably could not have conceived of such an adult job. Had we thought of it, we could have played “spray attack”, with atomized bottles. That would have been fun, but a highly wasteful us of perfume.
Sometimes kids’ idea of what to do with fragrance does not involve wearing it.
Dilana: so true…”chemistry”/lab would have gone over well with me!
When I found out I was having b/g twins, I couldn’t resist picking up Versace Baby Blue and Baby Rose Jeans to lightly spritz their clothes and blankets with now and then. My younger son was a Burberry Baby Touch baby, particularly because they made a lovely massage oil that he loved after his bath and an alcohol free edt. I also used Crabtree & Evelyn’s Summer Hill drawer liners and room spray for his nursery, and to this day those smells bring back wonderful memories.
With my little one, who’ll be two on Saturday, I wasn’t sure what I’d decide. I picked up a bottle of that Love Baby Chic for girls for a song, but it smelled more teen ager than baby to me. So then I bought a Mustela set for babies and absolutely adored the powdery orange blossom scent of the products. I’ve been using them with her ever since she was born, and while their edt designed for children doesn’t quite smell like their line for babies, it is a little sweet, a little green and strewn with soft florals, so it’s just right and doesn’t overwhelm. I tried the older Petit Guerlain but by the time I wanted to buy some for LO, it was reformulated and the original hard to find.
All my children like scented things, no doubt due to being my kids. They always want to stop to smell flowers, run to find the candle department in shops and my younger son loves helping me choose a perfume to wear from my cabinet… As long as he gets a spritz as well. And my older daughter, now thirteen, loves Pacifica, MJ Daisy and surprisingly enough, JHAG Romantina, though she reminds me she isn’t wild about the AT Rose Flash I’ve been wearing this week. 😉
When he was younger, my middle kid (he just turned 17!) used to ask me to spritz the hem of his sleep t-shirt with AG Petite Cherie before he went to bed.
I used to have a bottle of Baby Rose Jeans – I wish I kept it! It was very light and pretty.
That’s so sweet about your son, Mals. I wonder if it is a comfort to them, especially if it’s something we wear i.e., all my kids love when I wear Angel since it clung to them after we’d just had a cuddle or read a book together when they were little. So not the usual perception of that perfume, but it is a cozy snuggly perfume to me now and makes me think of my babies.
AnnS, yes, Versace did have some lovely perfumes back in the day. I always liked Blonde and White Jeans, too, but most of the Jeans were pretty nice.
My older son actually loves Dior Eau Sauvage, but this is the child who would live in a dress shirt and tie and wear a tux to anything slightly formal if I’d let him. 😉 He was classy from the start.
AbScent: ah…had forgotten about the Mustela range…very nice.
I am glad nobody waited for me to show interest in perfume before giving me some. Of course, all my early fragrances were gifts from grandmothers or aunts, and pretty age-appropriate: rollerballs or solids designed for kids, most of them from Avon. I think I was maybe six when I got my first solid perfume, but can’t remember what it smelled like. I do remember getting the lesson in how/when/where to wear it, that is important.
And, too, that was the 70s – I wore exclusively dresses, skirts or non-jeans pants to school until I was in third grade, and perfume was part of the whole going-out-of-the-house thing for my mom. She wore perfume* and lipstick to go to the grocery store, so it was a given at our house that people wore fragrance. Gender roles have changed at least a wee bit since then! *Mom had “dressy” perfume – No. 5 – and “everyday” perfume – Jovan Musk for Women, or Anais Anais.
Colognes would probably be pretty safe for a child, or orange flower water.
My kids are a bit older now (13 and 17) but neither have shown any great interest in perfume. I’ve bought things for them form time to time but they don’t really wear them. Perhaps they get too much exposure via my daily use of perfume. Sometimes they will say that they don’t recognize scents as well as I do. I tell them it doesn’t matter – just wear what you like – but they are still not keen.
My daughter is always up for a trip to Lush though. We have oodles of fun there!
annemarie: well, your daughter is getting her scent-fix from LUSH, that’s for sure! Even their “quietest” aromas are powerhouses!
My first perfumes were presents from my two much older sisters for my 9th birthday. One perfume smelt heavily of violet. I knew it to be violet, because there were violets hand-painted on the ceramic bottle. I want to call the other Evening in Paris, but I could be wrong about that. It came in a slim, deep blue, glass bottle with a stopper in white, shaped like a minaret. After that birthday, I always, always had perfumes. I would buy them myself with money sent to me by my Great Aunt Marion, who lived in Florida. She would enclose a $10 note for my birthday and Christmas in the letters she wrote to mum, with the same instructions every time: I was “to buy something my heart desired”. I had to take the money into the bank and exchange it. I received 3 pounds ten shillings, which was absolute RICHES for me. I wrote back horribly prim letters of thanks, but I was much more grateful then the letters would have suggested, because I looked forward to buying “scent”. Little girls in A-NZ at that time didn’t wear “perfume”: that was considered too sophisticated, but “scent” was acceptable. I don’t know the basis of the distinction. I think I bought things by Helena Rubinstein and I’m sure there was something called “Indigo”.
I don’t have children but I do have a couple of great nieces, and I like to swoop down on them sometimes and whisk them away for “treats” (helps their loving but exhausted mother too). At 10 & 13, they probably lie outside your sample group, Kevin, or at least at the upper end of it but I mention them because the Last time we went on An Expotition,we decided that they were old enough for perfume. It was surprisingly difficult to find something they liked that I considered suitable. We ended up with Noa, Omnia Amethyst and were wondering about Daisy as well, until the older g.n. sent me into fits of laughter by announcing in the most world-weary way that Daisy seemed “really rather derivative”. I think they will soon move up (if that’s the correct expression) to Cashmere Mist: they both liked it, but judged it, budding sophisticates that they are, “not age-appropriate yet”!
If I could design a fragrance for really young children it would probably be the scent of L’Occitane Shea Butter hand cream, the one in the silver metal tube.
waterddragon: the Shea Butter handcream scent WOULD be nice for children of either gender…it’s rather “comforting” and cozy.
The idea of a 13 year old calling Daisy, ‘really rather derivative’ has me grinning from ear to ear!
As a kid I loved to smell everything, the scent of vanilla icecream and freshly baked cookies, hay, freshly cut grass, old cooked potatoe peels (don’t ask), petrol, rotting leaves in autumn, rain, earth, asphalt, my father’s cigars, my granny’s despised Tosca, the lipsticks of my mother and the mixture of chalk and desinfectants in my school. Childhood scents.
I’ve got my first perfume when I was 14 or 15 and I asked my dad for it as a birthday present (it was Climat, probably the sales person recommended it, but it’s still one of my favourites).
I don’t think that children should have their own perfume, it’s too adult. Kids should explore natural scents in their environment not being plastered with manmade scents, before they can create their own scent memory. It hones their sense of smell, after all.
Perfumes for children are just a marketing thing to get customers as young as possible or to create scent memories to create future customers.
Let kids experinece their own sense of smell and not manipulate them with cheap artificial crap.
Carry: the “natural” method was certainly how I developed my love of perfume: my father and grandmother were gardeners and those flower-plant-fruit aromas made me want to sniff more of everything.
I’d guess that many children who enjoy “children’s” fragrances ALSO sniff everything, outside and in.
I certainly did.
I agree. I would never force perfume on an uninterested child, but I certainly wouldn’t discourage them from trying what they liked.
I have always loved perfume, as far back as I can remember. I used to love to sniff my mother’s perfumes, and even sneak a drop of it when I could. My favorite was Arpege.
The first perfume of my own that I had was an Avon rollerball, at around age 5. I don’t remember the name. It was probably a gift from either my grandmother or my great-aunt. A few years later my great-aunt gave me a spray bottle of Coty Muguet des Bois for Christmas. I kept it on my dresser, used it on special occasions, and never sprayed it on anyone or anything but myself. It was precious, and I used it sparingly, as I didn’t know if there would be another bottle to replace it when it ran out. I don’t think I had specifically asked for perfume, as I figured my parents would never buy it for me, so why bother? I don’t know how my aunt knew that wanted perfume, but I am glad she did. My mother had many perfumes, but seldom wore them, and I don’t recall her ever giving me any perfume, except maybe once when I was in high school. I acquired a bottle of Emeraude when I was around 14 or 15, and I don’t remember if I bought it myself or if I had asked for it for Christmas.
My first bottle of cologne was L’Air De Temps. I think I was around 7yrs. old. That started my fascination with fragrance, and I have been hooked ever since. If I had a daughter, I definitely would have shared my love of fragrance with her the way my mom did with me.
I was a little older than that when my mother gave me her L’Air du Temps dusting powder. I was thinking about this recently and was able to snag a vintage, sealed LdT dusting powder on Ebay and im really excited to see if it transports me back to being young and playing dress-up with my mom.
I have two little perfumistas here. Started giving my wrists, flowers and herbs from the garden for them to smell since they were very small. I think colognes are the most appropriate for kids, so I get Eau de Cologne Imperiale in 5 ml decants for the 6 yrs old boy, he really enjoys it, having his signature cologne, but I apply. Not that he is a total stranger to sneaking into my room and dabbing stuff like Rumba or Poison. I pretend not to notice, if it´s not too much and he closed the bottle decently. As if, lol, not noticing these would be hard… The girl will be my real trouble, though. I apply a small dab of some weaker Rosine on the top of her hair, and now she asks for a little on her wrists too, for her to be able to smell. Already disappeared with my Coco Mdemoiselle mini, and learned to say Chanel along the way. She is 2.
BTW, she is a total tomboy, no tiara toddler, in spite of the Ssanel thing…
My daughter, who is also 7, has her own little collection now. She was shown the path at a very early age:)! She also has some Pacifica rollers (Blood orange being her favourite, but she tends to like sweet fruity scents and citruses, not powdery ones. She has some Hello Kitty stuff, a hideous Playboy bunny-ear thingy she cadged from my BFF’s dressing table as it looked cute, and various body sprays, minis, a cut glass bottle (her very first at the age of 5) that I fill again and again with a mixture I make for her (strawberry-vanilla scent). She rarely leaves for school without a spritz on, but what can I say? Genetics!
As for my son, (4,5) it is a kind of ‘she has some, I want some’ game, not really interested at applying it yet, but has some oils and a classic (mini) cologne. Also a roller deo with a vetiver-lemongrass scent(these are organic). But what surprises me, is that they had such keen noses at such an early age, recognizing stuff like quince, violets, smoke and hazelnut, cut grass and honey notes, that I had to sbiff for years anno to ‘get’. Now what is that suppose to mean? That I was doing something damn right:)… (joking)
You sure are doing something very right, no joking.
Oh and forgot to add that we also, like many of You, smell practically EVERYTHING we come across. Spice, food, weather, people and animals and plants and rooms and walls and fabric and books and really everything. I guess that we are kind of passing them this perspective, teaching them to pay attention, so not necessarily the ‘hoarding’ , but this secret dreamworld that other people hardly notice and we do:). A richer, more colorful life, so to speak? Not a bad thing to inherit!
I grew up in Spanish speaking Caribbean household, so the whole house was scented, and we had a sort of unisex family scent: Camay or Pears soap (does anybody know or remember those?), Florida or Kanaga water and 4711. All of us, even the little ones smelled of this. Even when I started wearing perfume in my teens I still splashed on 4711 as a base.
Above, someone suggested rosewater or orange blossom water, which is a brilliant idea for little ones. Bonus- it’s not reactive to developing nervous systems.
Ede: remember all those aromas except for Kanaga water…must look it up!
When my boys were still young enough that I bathed them (okay, that was a while ago as they are now 12 and 14), I would always dab a spot of perfume on their wet hair before drying it with a towel. No reason at all except I liked it. I cannot remember which fragrances… but I used to have a bottle of Rose 4 Reines (Occitane) and that sounds about right.
This is one of my favorite sets of NST comments, ever. What lovely memories — recent and less so — all of you are sharing!
My mother and grandmother both were big fans of Vitabath, so I would get that in my bathwater at grandma’s house (less often at home, where my younger brother’s preferences, probably also cost, led us toward Mr. Bubble). I do remember my mother’s stepmother scolding her during a visit for letting me, “a little girl,” use a scented bubble bath. I think she was afraid I’d get a urinary tract infection — and she may have been right to worry! Anyway, I still love the smell of Vitabath, both pink and green. For “perfume,” it was Jean Naté, which I don’t really like, but which has powerful scent memories — my mom used the “splash” in the summer, and it is lovely and cooling.
My godparents gave me a gift set of Love’s Baby Soft when I was in…sixth grade? Maybe even fifth. I was ecstatic. My parents were clueless, but both of my godparents taught in middle schools, and so although they, like my parents, were old enough to be mistaken for my grandparents, they “got” what a pre-teen girl would secretly covet.
I also played with my mom’s perfumes, and occasionally spritzed them. She rarely wore any of them, and I don’t really know that they suited her (Arpège, My Sin, and what I *think* was Dioressence, which I liked the best of that group). Dad wore Old Spice or Brut. When I got old enough to buy and wear cosmetics and perfume, my first perfume purchase was Magie Noire, which I loved, but turned pretty quickly. Oh, and I got a very small bottle of DVF’s Tatiana as a hand-me-down from a family friend, and still remember the day I put some on before heading to high school (I think I was still a freshman), and had my first experience with fragrance that gains sillage as it warms to your body. Oops. And still remain grateful to the boy in my French class — one of the cool kids, and a year or two older than me — who made a comment about the perfume and then, seeing my probably horrified face, said, “No, I like it, you smell nice.” Apparently no one gave me the “how/when/where” perfume talk; had to figure it out on my own.
I used Bellodgia in grade school. No idea how it got to the house and why I was allowed to use it.
My eight year old daughter has always intently smelled and discussed everything she encounters. She started asking for my discarded decants a couple of years ago so she was scented with all sorts of strange inappropriate things, really peculiar on a small girl but it was just part of her smelling journey. She has settled down now to L’Air du Temps when we go out for a meal and it smells fabulous on her. I note a few others have mentioned it and it is really great on kids: clean, innocent and charming. And there are birds perched on the bottle so what could be better? I will also try her on the Yardley soliflores I was gifted as a kid, she may be able to reignite the specialness they held for me.