I was never a body spray girlie: Too often they’ve been cheap catalogue fillers from big brands looking to cash in on the success of better, more expensive products. Something cheap or sweet, for kids who couldn’t afford the full-force version of an eau de parfum. A consolation product — better than the scented hand cream, but not by much.
Ouai Body Spray is different.
I love Ouai Body Sprays — some more than others, but all of them a bit. To varying degrees, the scents are distinctive, rich, and long-lasting. Here’s how I’d rank them:
Truth: I didn’t think I could like a scent more than St. Barts, which we’ll get to in a second. But then — Ibiza. Ouai’s Ibiza scent is a miracle. Officially it’s an “intoxicating blend of cocoa, tonka bean, vanilla & rum”: I smell spice, I smell rum, I smell long weekends in Marrakech and Diptyque’s Ambre candle. It’s deep, rich, and if by “intoxicating” they mean “you can’t get enough of it,” then I co-sign.
Ouai’s scents are designed to recall vacation destinations: sunny, fruity, light ‘n’ bright, something both St. Barts and Santorini do well (Melrose Place not so much). Ibiza is slightly to the side of the first two. This is a destination scent, sure — but only at nighttime, and romantic and rich.
Bonus: It lasts. All four of them do, but Ibiza is no exception. A five-star purchase, no notes. Not as deep as my favorite scents — Le Labo’s Thé Noir — but, at a fraction of the price, on the same shelf.
Until I discovered Ibiza, I would have been completely confident that St. Barts would be my favorite of all the Ouai Body Mists: It’s light, it’s bright, it’s fruity — it’s a pina colada, if the point of a pina colada was to make you smell like a pina colada.
I know there are people out there who believe that smelling like a pina colada is not, per se, desirable — or more specifically, that coconut-forward scents read as cheap. There’s truth to this: Ibiza, by contrast, is rich and distinct, smelling only of itself; St. Barts smells like sun tan lotion. The thing is, a lot of us live in the sun tan lotion/pina colada overlap, and St. Barts was made for us.
Extra points for the gold foil text on the label, which is both pretty and festive.
Melrose Place is the newest addition to Ouai’s body mist line up, but fans of the brand will recognize the rose-centric fragrance from the existing collection of eau de parfum, body wash, and more. The body mist is just as good! My experience is that the longevity isn’t on par with Ibiza or St. Barts — both of which I’ve smelled in my clothes days after using it — but I do expect it to last perhaps two to four hours. Think roses, roses, and more roses: clean, bright, modern, not fusty, not dusty, not powdery. The scent of a beautiful but young-skewing changing room in a stylish Manhattan gym. It doesn’t smell like money, but it does smell like promise.
The only complaint is that I love how the other three map so clearly onto vacation destinations. Melrose Place doesn’t smell like an escape to me. It smells like hard work, maximal effort, and precision.
I’m not even sure how poor Santorini got stuck here in fourth place. Certainly the IRL Santorini would be tops among all of these vacation destinations (well, maybe second to St. Bart’s.) With its notes of “peach, orange, honeysuckle, and amber,” it’s nice: somehow midway between the exuberance of St. Barts and the pristine reserve of Melrose Place, even if it’s not spectacular (like Ibiza) or delectable (like St. Barts). Similarly, I don’t find it hugely resonant of other places (like St. Barts) or sophisticated (like Ibiza). If someone gave it to me, I would not return it, but I’m not sure I would remember to wear it, either.
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