To know Vacation is to love Vacation—and no, I’m not talking about a foreign excursion. Those who love the cult-favorite suncare brand swear by all its products and are first in line for every new release. The whipped cream sunscreen? It’s as viral as it is protective. The classic SPF’s scent? It makes people repurchase time and time again. So, obviously, the brand’s first perfume, reminiscent of its fan-favorite sunblock was going to be just as much a hit as the original lotion.
However, what about after the sun? You know those days when you spend too long on the beach and come back a little burnt, only to slather on aloe vera gel after taking the coolest shower of your life? Well, the scent of your body coated in skin-loving aloe as you wrap yourself in the coziest linens to refresh before dinner is exactly the source of the brand’s latest—and soon-to-be cult-followed—fragrance.
Ahead, everything you need to know about Vacation’s latest fragrance, After Sun Eau de Toilette.
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The Inspiration
Like most things Vacation does, this scent started some nostalgia—the same kind of nostalgia that fuels all of the brand’s ’80s-inspired launches like the Orange Gelée Revival Project. However, since nostalgia is a feeling everyone experiences differently, it poses a bit of a challenge to create a fragrance based completely on memory.
Carlos Huber, Fragrance Developer and founder of Arquiste Parfumeur, who helped develop the new scent, tells Byrdie that “Whenever you’re playing with nostalgia, emotions and moods, we’re dealing with an emotional, subjective experience.” To make sure the fragrance was as transportive as they wanted, the brand was “very literal, and paint[ed] the picture of the experience as detailed as possible through fragrance notes.”
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The feeling they were going for was “that refreshing ‘reset’ moment between a long day at the beach and that evening’s plans after sunset,” Rodrigo Flores-Roux, Givaudan Vice President of Perfumery and the nose behind the fragrance tells us. “It’s that soothing relief you feel when you escape the sun with a cool shower in your hotel room, thinking about the possibilities that the night will bring.”
Huber adds that “After Sun is a fragrance that will transport you to a specific moment of leisure, the fresh excitement of a holiday evening after a day in the sun. Yet, with this scent, you’ll want to recreate this experience all the time, day to day.”
The Fragrance
To capture the essence of this in-between time, the pair turned to the scents most likely to be in the air at a beachside resort: aloe vera, melons, linen, towels, and even gin. However, Huber adds that there are also “thirst-quenching notes like crisp cucumber slices, and unexpected ones such as cardamom, which is a subtle, spicy note that gives you a bit of a hook—a counterpoint to the freshness, something that sticks out and drives you inside the scent.”
Vacation
The fragrance opens with top notes of aloe vera essence, green tea verjus, and melon de cavaillon—also known as cantaloupe. At the heart of the fragrance are those notes of cardamom absolute, Aqua di Colonia, ozone, tonic water, and minibar gin to invoke the cocktail you can’t wait to sip after your aloe soaks in. Then, you get the base notes of resort towels and open-weave linen to comfort your body from a day of fun in the sun.
Flores-Roux explained that “In some ways, we went very literal in order to capture the essence of that ‘after sun setting,’ through textile notes to evoke plush hotel towels, juniper berry, and lime to capture a minibar gin and tonic.” Not to mention, the “more evocative notes, like melon de cavaillon to deliver that gelatinous feeling of the soothing aloe vera.”
You can shop After Sun for $60 at vaction.inc.