When you spritz a scent and get an aquatic hit of melon, it’s probably not actually melon you smell – that so-refreshing summer fruit – but an ingredient called ‘calone’, one of the best-known synthetic ingredients in a perfumer’s weaponry. Launched in the 1990s, calone recreates the honey-like, watery qualities of the delectable fruit – a relation of squashes and cucumbers – which originated in Africa and south-west Asia. The availability of this synthetic ingredient has probably helped to shape the trend for aquatic fragrances, as well as for fruity-florals.
Probably the most famous ‘melon’ fragrance is Calyx: originally launched under the Prescriptives brand (now a long-lost part of Estée Lauder), and newly relaunched by Clinique – but with fruity-florals still ‘hotter’ than a beach in St. Barth’s, there are plenty of others…
Smell melon in:
Clinique Calyx
David & Victoria Beckham Intense Instinct
Dior J’Adore
Floris Fleur
Frederic Malle Carnal Flower
Guerlain Champs Elysées
Ineke Angel’s Trumpet
Miller Harris Le Pamplemousse
Thierry Mugler Angel
