Tom Ford Soleil Blanc’s Is The Sexiest Beach Scent in History

I have been obsessed — obsessed! — with Tom Ford’s Soleil Blanc since the first time I smelled it, which I don’t mind saying with at the Sephora at the Jersey Gardens Mall. Maybe it was the very stylish, very Versace c. 1992 white and gold packaging? All I know is that when I first sprayed it, I was instantly transported — my initial Tom Ford Soleil Blanc review is that this perfume is even more of a madeleine than a madeleine. Most perfumes transport you to a time when you wore that perfume. This perfume transports you everywhere:

– The community pool where I learned to swim when I was seven
– The Pacific Ocean at Tamarindo, Puerto Rico, where I once ferried a ream of typing paper to an eccentric novelist
– A vacation with an ex-boyfriend in Thailand

Soleil Blanc smells not just like the beach (there are all kinds of beaches!) but like summer vacation. It smells like freedom? Happiness? Sunshine? (Also, definitely, coconut sun cream. (No SPF.)) It smells like the first weekend in June after school’s out, the Outer Banks cottage with your cousins, just basically every happy warm-weather memory. Officially, Tom Ford Soleil Blanc “is an addictive solar floral amber alive with seductive refinement and refreshing decadence.” There are notes, of bergamot, pink pepper, and benzoin.

Those are the facts. I think the better questions, though, are philosophical: Can we just live at the beach? Would our lives be happier if we did? Would it eventually get so boring that we’d long for the roster of pine-centric Christmas candles from the White Barn?

I have a complaint that suggests an answer to those questions. When I tried this one at Sephora, I remember the disappointment of thinking it had evaporated faster than I wanted to: I have a clear image of getting to my car in the mall parking lot and thinking that it hadn’t even stuck around that long. Au contraire, after a month’s-worth of wearing it at home: If anything, it’s too durable, and after a while — approximately 45 minutes — I just don’t want to smell it anymore; there’s some strange, powder-y level that gives me a headache. I think there ultimately is a point when you can have too much of a good thing: Soleil Blanc, the beach, sunshine, all of it. But in smaller doses, they’re all perfection.

TL;DR: Is Soleil Blanc worth it?

I’ve had my same bottle for three years now — so I’ve paid about $12 a month for it, though I still have quite a bit left, so that’ll come down a little in the months to come. That’s not nothing. But I do think it was money well spent.