Try This Vanilla Perfume for Valentine's Day: Guerlain Spiriteuse Double Vanille Review

All products featured on Teen Vogue are independently selected by Teen Vogue editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, Condé Nast may earn an affiliate commission.

Courtesy of brand


Regardless of whether you're in a long-term relationship or delightfully single, Valentine's Day is great for embracing a classic: Vanilla perfume. After all, the day is about sweetness, seduction, and, okay, sometimes too saccharine love stories.

Choosing the perfect Valentine's Day fragrance has become weirdly important to me this year, perhaps as a way to exert control in a world that is fundamentally out of my control. The right perfume could take me on a perfect date, lead me to a cinematic meet-cute, or just accompany me to a Galentine's Day gathering with my closest friends. It feels like a chance for a little bit of make-believe, a little romantic reimagining of my life.

I'm not typically a wearer of gourmand perfumes (chocolate, fruit, anything that reminds you of dessert); I'm more drawn to clean, fresh scents or woody rainforest vibes. But vanilla is a historical aphrodisiac; it's versatile depending on how it's made, and it has a kind of timeless energy. Before I got super into perfumes, I most associated it with the Bath and Body Works Warm Vanilla Sugar scent all my classmates were obsessed with in middle school. But vanilla doesn't have to be cloying and overwhelming, sugary sweet, or basic.

Enter, the vanilla perfume to end all vanilla perfumes: Guerlain Spiriteuse Double Vanille, which is often found on Reddit threads of perfume heads hunting for the perfect form of the ingredient. The Guerlain perfume packaging always makes me feel fancy as f*ck, and this bottle is no exception. Spritz one on the wrist and another behind the ear, and you get this scent that feels luxurious and alluring while also familiar and homey. Guerlain describes it as a “woody-ambery fragrance” (hey, that's why I'm into it) amplified by an “excess of vanilla." It's spicy in all the best ways without completely taking over a room when you walk into it. (I like to mix it with Guerlain's Tobacco Honey when I'm feeling extra.)

Admittedly, it is an expensive option for a special occasion fragrance, but there's a reason Redditors often call it the holy grail of vanilla perfumes. (And you can always pick up samples and decants before you commit to a whole bottle.) Happy romancing!

Guerlain Spiriteuse Double Vanille

$425.00, Neiman Marcus


Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue


Want more great Culture stories from Teen Vogue? Check these out: