What to Wear: On an Airplane
Thoughtful scents for close proximity and small spaces
Open up any of the major airlines’ dedicated subreddits and you’ll see at least one post a week complaining of passengers who smell. Whether it’s body odor or a horribly offensive fragrance (or someone’s tuna sub), smells and irritation are heightened when a bunch of strangers are trapped together in a pressurized metal tube with recycled air. What’s a passenger to do if they want to smell nice but not too much? What fragrances are TSA Pre Check Champion approved? Don’t reach for that Duty Free Tom Ford Tabaco Vanille tester and consider these for your next flight.
Glossier - You
Yes, I’ve written about You before. Yes, my review remains the same. It’s a gorgeous, soft floral with a little musk. It sinks into the skin like it’s not even there but always shows up when you want it to. It sticks around for hours but doesn’t project very far. Maybe they’re born with it, maybe it’s Glossier.
The unobtrusiveness and long wear time make Glossier You perfect for an airplane however. A spray or two on the wrists, maybe one in the hair, and an extra spritz onto the hoodie or jacket you’ll be wearing on the plane (they’re always colder than you expect) and you’ll be set for hours. No need to worry about getting an extra liquid through security, no worrying about it wearing off midway through the flight and having your seatmate smell your stress sweat, You is a solid and dependable performer. However, you also don’t need to worry about being that guy in 23F that people in first class can smell, or having a sensitive nose next to you start coughing and wheezing since it projects just for you (and your seatmate when they lean over you to talk to the flight attendant or look out the window).
Glossier You is what I wear on airplanes for this exact reason. I also find the iris and musk combo to be oddly relaxing, so when I’m trying to get my Delta app to update with my next gate and realizing I have to take an inter-terminal bus/tram/hike on a tight schedule, I suddenly get a waft of You around me and it helps me chill out. Even if I miss my flight and have to go crying to the gate agent or I take one unopened bottle of water through TSA and they arrest me for terrorism, at least I’ll smell good.
Juliette Has a Gun - Sunny Side Up
JHAG is the reigning champ of skin scents, if you ask me. Everyone knows Not a Perfume, and that’s a very good alternative to You, but I find it just a tad too clinical and soapy. It’s almost cold on my skin. For that reason, I’d like to introduce you to their creamy, soft, and often overlooked skin scent Sunny Side Up. It’s a soft white wood that opens so silky you would be forgiven for thinking it’s a lactonic scent. There’s a very light vanilla and jasmine opener but it isn’t cloying or overly sweet. It’s reminiscent of the comforting, neutral aroma of slightly warmed milk. The mid notes include coconut milk and sandalwood, leading us into that simple, creamy midline that’s extended with ISO E Super and ambrette at the base (the same note that gives Glossier You it’s musky softness).
I am a huge fan of ISO E Super and it shows up in a lot of my personal favorite skin scents. It’s a synthetic molecule and smells a bit like both cedar and sandalwood, that gentle, slightly dry, light wood family. It’s a very simple note, but has an element of transparency that makes it hard for your brain to isolate when smelled. It’s like you know you’re smelling something but not entirely sure what and it can’t be pinned down. ISO can be superdosed nicely since it’s not very overwhelming even at large quantities, like in fragrances such as D.S. & Durga’s I Don’t Know What and Ellis Brooklyn’s ISO Gamma Super.1 It also helps with projection, since it gets into the air easily without being aggressive.
Each of the notes in Sunny Side Up has a bit of wood and a bit of creamy sweetness, but nothing steals the show or smells particularly noticeable amongst the rest. The whole thing just melts together into the skin. You smell it now and then when you move and the ISO E Super floats around you, but it’s a very quiet fragrance. It smells like a spa room in a ski lodge, wood scent in the air and something soothing but unidentifiable. The marketing copy says “This fragrance reminds us of moments of freedom, insouciance and letting go. Those warm balmy days when the sun never seems to set and time is suspended,” and I can agree with that as well. I wouldn’t necessarily think of it as a vacation inspired fragrance, but the bliss of a warm day is an easy concept to feel here.
On a personal note, I love that JHAG keeps the same bottle silhouette but changes the designs and colors of the bottle for each fragrance, and Sunny Side Up is a white bottle with an egg yolk yellow top. It works for both the idea of the sun over a white sand beach and a yummy fried egg.
Clean Reserve - Skin
You know how taking a shower in a hotel feels like you’ve gotten even more clean than you do at home? Maybe it’s because the bar soap is a little stripping or the clinical white tile feels more sterile, but somehow every shower I’ve taken, whether at a 5 star ryokan or a Hampton Inn, I feel more reborn than at home. This fragrance feels like I’ve just taken one of those showers.
It’s a skin scent, but with a definite air of crisp, good soap. Depending on where you look, there are a few different notes listed as being in the fragrance, but what I get most is musk, vanilla flower, and salt. It’s a very soft, gender neutral fragrance, erring slightly sweet due to the vanilla orchid, but the salt gives it just a little mineral grit. Next to the skin the most noticeable note is the musk and salt, which combine to mimic the scent of warm skin. The salt note is the big, clear crystals of sea salt, and mixed with the “warm skin accord” of the musk it smells like you just climbed out of a beautiful blue sea, the kind where you can see the bottom, and let the salty water dry on your sun kissed skin. Vanilla flower gently lifts some of the salt into the air, making this wonderfully contradictive accord of mineral and floral float around you. As with most musk-based skin scents, there is little projection, so no worries about bothering anyone else with it. Clean calls this a “cozy” scent that was “inspired by the feeling of a warm embrace” and that’s a great way to describe it.
I do not find it to be a scent that changes too much over the wear time. The mid/base notes of musk and vanilla emerge at first spray and stay with you until the whole fragrance has worn off. It lasts for a long time, smelling like warm, sweetened skin until the very end. It reminds me enormously of really expensive lotion or good laundry soap. It smells clean and gentle, does not project too far, and anyone who does get close enough to smell you would not be able to clock a fragrance immediately, it really could just be emanating from you after a particularly good shower.
Ellis Brooklyn - Myth
If Glossier You is for the preppy, younger crowd and Clean Reserve Skin is for the professionals, Myth feels like a skin scent for the alternatives. It’s a little masculine, a little grungy, but still a little soft and clean. Like you took a shower and then put on some black lipstick.
It opens with ambrette, so that same creamy musk from You and Sunny Side Up, but it’s invigorated with the green of cassis and bergamot. These aren’t too perceptible by themselves, but they prevent the musk from getting bogged down too quickly. The musk leads you into the floral center, championed by clear, light pink lotus. If you’ve ever smelled lotus, you’ll know it’s a clean, watery scent, very lightly sweet. It’s accompanied by orchid, which is another light floral with just a ribbon of creaminess to it. Both of these have an element of transparency that make them very approachable and easy to wear. It’s hard to suggest that any floral is gender neutral, but I think the clarity both posses make them easy to wear for anyone, and they aren’t immediately identifiable as flower notes. They are buoyed into the air by jasmine. As with Sunny Side Up, this jasmine is not a heavy white floral, but a note that helps gently lift the fragrance around the wearer.
At the base is musk, continuing that soft white note trail from the ambrette and jasmine, but it’s given a little depth with cedar extract and patchouli. When it’s not being amped up by elemi or vetiver, patchouli is usually a dry, herbal scent, not too sticky or medicinal. Combined with the midweight cedar, this makes the base here very unobtrusive and helps negate some of the overtly feminine aspects of the fragrance. Once it gets to the base it basically stops projecting at all, which is really nice because it lasts for hours.
I love wearing this one when I want to smell interesting but I don’t want anything too substantial. This one does not smell like skin or soap, it’s very obviously a fragrance, but due to the fairly unusual main note of lotus, which isn’t aggressively floral, Myth smells nice and bright without being too obvious. I used to get a lot of “wow really?!” comments on it when I wore it at Sephora because it’s such an enigmatic and underrated gem.
Overall
Musk based fragrances with just a few other notes rule the skies when it comes to good skin scents to keep you smelling nice without bothering your arm rest mate. Creamy and gentle notes like vanilla and jasmine help create that “your skin but better” fragrance, and transparent notes like salt and ISO E Super give the fragrance a little extra interest without being annoying or forcing projection. These are also amazing for everyday fragrances if you work in an industry that discourages noticeable scent for any reason!
All of these come in travel sizes so pick one up to pop in your personal bag before your next flight and you’ll have one less thing to worry about. And remember to fill up your water bottle after security!
A Notes Clash post featuring ISO E Super is in the works