Finding the Perfect Honeysuckle Scent

When I remember the scents of my Texas childhood, honeysuckle will always play a part. It wasn't as showy as the lone gardenia bush outside my Mother's kitchen window that she babied and even occasionally covered with a blanket on a cold winter night. It was never really planted in the landscape, it just appeared. In fact its greatest charm was that it was a rogue bush, tenacious in its growth  and unfussy in its habitat needs. In those more innocent days when as children we could roam far afield during summer days, away from our Mother's watchful eye, you would smell the honeysuckle before you saw it in field explorations. You could be approaching the little creek running through the field and suddenly smell its sweet honey floating on the breeze. In fact it seemed that the more decrepit, decaying, or derelict the location, the more likely you were to find a honeysuckle vine thriving away in benign neglect.

If you Google honeysuckle one of the top articles has the headline: Honeysuckle Is A Blob-Like Monster Taking Over American Forests. This is the Japanese species, Lonicera Japonica introduced to the USA in the early 1900s. It found fertile ground in some states and can spread prolifically. There is a species of native honeysuckle sold in plant nurseries which is pretty but scentless, much like how the scent was bred out of some roses. Today I don't often see honeysuckle bushes in the carefully tended yards of my neighbors, but in older neighborhoods and along a back road it can often be found climbing fences and spilling down the other side in lacy clouds of white and yellow blossoms. I have such happy memories of having a tea party with my childhood friend in my backyard, each of us with out favorite doll on a small blanket. A pile of honeysuckle blossoms, freshly picked, were on a plate. We'd carefully pull the slender thread of the stamen out through the bottom of the flower and taste the tiny drop of nectar that glistened on the tip. Then we'd offer a taste to our dolls.  All this is to say that probably more than most floral scents, honeysuckle is the stuff of childhood. Memories of the scent are tied up with visiting my Grandparent's rustic house in the country, and as dusk fell madly running around the yard with all my cousins, trying to catch fireflies in jam jars, then releasing them and watching them soar off into the dark skies, all of this scented by the tangle of honeysuckle vines and the prickly blackberry bushes.

Honeysuckle scents stimulate some of these great memories of my childhood summers so I set about trying as many scents featuring honeysuckle as I could get my hands on in a hurry.


Dame Perfumery Soliflore Honeysuckle is a soft fragrant breath of  scent, reminiscent of backyard barbecues, old style wooden picnic tables clad with red and white checkered cloths, and a yard shaded with large old oaks and tangles of honeysuckle bushes climbing the chain leak fence. It is soft and gentle and gives an interpretation of honeysuckle that starts off slightly creamy and with a touch of lemon. It is only a little sweet, just like the flower, and is a very good rendition which reminded me of my childhood backyard. I think someone would have to move in close to smell this, projection is not huge. I found it to be a very pretty honeysuckle that had a smile on my face while I was wearing it. Jeffrey Dame makes a collection of Soliflores and his Gardenia and Rose de Mai are among my favorites. He describes his soliflore collection: A true floral, alive and in full bloom. Lifting off into the breeze, floating in the air; adrift in the garden of earthly delight. For me, Dame Soliflore Honeysuckle is CREAMY honeysuckle.

Deconstructing Eden's Halo is old-time summer in a bottle. The perfumer says it's a Charleston summer to her, and the description says: moonlight, sea water, lilacs, wisteria, honeysuckle and moonflower. Halo is a breath of sea-water laden air with rich floral notes that are predominantly lilac and honeysuckle. Acquatic notes can sometimes put me off but this one just adds to the perfume oils lazy summer mood. (NOTE: since last night the shop has put up a sign that they are on hiatus for three months and that Halo will be discontinued. Once she opens, though, I'll be asking her to please recreate this one.) Halo is LANGUID honeysuckle.

Annick Goutal Le Chevrefeuille was created in 2002 by Annick's daughter Camille and Perfumer Isabelle Doyen as a nod to Camille's happy childhood memories of her family's home in the south of France, playing Princess dress up with her cousins, their heads crowned with honeysuckle wreaths. It's a nod to cheerful childhood memories. This scent opens with a green note, meant to invoke the leaves and stems of the honeysuckle as well as grass, but the green does not overshadow the honeysuckle scent, which is enfolded in notes of wild narcissus, jasmine, lemon and petit grain. I find this to be the greenest of the honeysuckle scents I tried. My bottle is probably ten years old so I'm not absolutely positive that the formula hasn't changed, but this is a favorite for me. Le Chevrefeuille is JOYOUS honeysuckle.

The Strange South, an Etsy shop, sells a perfume oil called Nightjar. I love the gothic images used to populate the online webshop. Nightjar does have honeysuckle in the mix, but it opens with the  scent of peach blossom. Other listed notes, which I can not recognize individually but give some idea that this is a deeper and more complex scent include: sage, fern, tuberose, dragon's blood, clove, and smoked vanilla. This reflects a garden as dusk fades into night; when all the flowers are emitting their strongest scent, no longer battling the heat of the sun. Creatures of the night take flight. The garden takes on an air of mystery and intrigue.  Nightjar isn't super strong on me but is definitely moodier and darker than the scents above. Nightjar is BROODING honeysuckle.



Alkemia is on Etsy and it has a prolific catalog of scents. Two attracted my attention with their honeysuckle notes, Desiderata and Midnight Garden and they have wildly different takes on the flower's scent. Midnight Garden surrounds the honeysuckle with gardenia, lily, and tuberose and despite this basket of sweet flower goodness it manages to be a pretty but softly contained scent. It's creamy and sweet and feels like you're at high tea in a Southern mansion with huge white columns on the porch and three hundred year old oak canopies shading the lawn.  Desiderata is Grapes of Wrath to Midnight Garden's more Steel Magnolia vibe. The notes of Desiderata are fresh honeysuckle, vetiver root, old barnwood, and river clay. Are those real notes? I don't know but it reads like the outline for a great novel, or for a great perfume. The honeysuckle is faint initially as if carried on the breeze. The vetiver is a bit dusty and gives the impression of wandering down a country road. I love that this is a realistic interpretation of how honeysuckle sprouts up in the wild and incorporates the smells that would be found in this setting. I smell the woody notes, and if clay is the impression of dirt and dust then that's there too. I do wish the honeysuckle scent hung around a bit longer but the vetiver begins to dominate. Still, I quite like this. These scents are oil based and they wear quietly, almost personal scents on my skin. I get about three hours of good longevity. Midnight Garden is LADYLIKE honeysuckle and  Desiderata is RUSTIC honeysuckle.

Sixteen92 made big splash a year or so ago when the perfume Bruise Violet was chosen as the winner of the 2017 Art + Olfaction Award - Artisan. Sixteen92 was at that time an unknown brand and beat out much more well known brands to win this honor. When I placed my sample order I meant to try her perfume A Thousand Times More Fair which features honeysuckle but I somehow messed up and forgot to include it. I did, however, order Supernatural Hair Serum in Tomato Leaf and Honeysuckle and wow, it's beautiful. I have thin, fine hair. Sounds lovely, right? In humid weather my hair puffs out like a poodle head and I've found a light application of oil to the ends is the best thing for controlling the frizz. The scent is described on the website as: green grass, sweet tomato leaf, and warm honeysuckle vine. This is a natural and slightly green honeysuckle and I love how my head is surrounded in a scent cloud of wonderfullness when I wear this serum. With each turn of my head I get a mini rush of happiness as the scent reaches the little happy olfactory receptors in my brain. Tomato Leaf and Honeysuckle Serum is REALISTIC honeysuckle.

There are few scents that Dawn Spencer Hurwitz hasn't dabbled with so I was fairly certain when I drew out my huge box that holds all the samples from DSH Perfumes collected over the years that I would find honeysuckle, and indeed I did. DSH Perfumes Wild Honeysuckle is a very realistic interpretation of the honeysuckle flower. It opens with a green and natural honeysuckle scent that is very soft and extremely realistic. There is the slightest powdery feel to the scent that reminds me of pollen. It is a simple replication of nature, perfect in its simplicity. I could see having a rollerball of this perfume available in my purse to drag out when ever I need a bit of zen in my day. Wearing it gives me a feeling of peacefulness and puts a smile on my face. It is surprisingly long lasting for such an ephemeral scent.  Wild Honeysuckle is PURE honeysuckle.

I haven't loved all the scents by the Estee Lauder Aerin brand as much as I would like. (I'm shamefully influenced by great graphics and beautiful packaging). I do, however, very much like Aerin Mediterranean Honeysuckle, enough so that I bought a gift set recently from Nordstrom, one of those boxes where you get a travel size and lotion for the same price as the bottle. The SA told me that at their store this was the best selling perfume from the Aerin brand. It doesn't surprise me as the scent of honeysuckle is a part of so many Southerner's memories.  Aerin Lauder sidestepped any references to the US market though by naming this Mediterranean Honeysuckle, and trying to curry associations to glamorous European vacations and everything that infers. The scent does conjure images of sparkling water, sandy beaches, and sunny summer days. The opening notes include grapefruit, bergamot, and mandarin oil to amp the sparkling citrus effect. To accentuate the honeysuckle scent, notes of lily, jasmine, and gardenia bring in creamy white flower notes. The scent is linear on my skin, but it's pretty and although it wears stronger than many of the naturals I've talked about above, it still doesn't seem like a big scent to me. Aerin Mediterranean Honeysuckle is a LASTING honeysuckle.

Honeysuckle: Harvesting the Sweet Nectar of Life by Falaco Soliton. WWW.Instructables.com.

Although Tom Ford Fleur de Portofino does not to my knowledge have honeysuckle as an ingredient, the acacia honey notes in the base combined with a cascade of sweet white flowers give it the feel of an opulent honeysuckle floral to me. The flowers used are white acacia, gardenia, magnolia, and jasmine. I really like this scent and the sheer blue bottle is appealing but I get no longevity to justify the price point. Tom Ford Fleur de Portifino is EXPENSIVE honeysuckle. by Es

Fresh Honeysuckle was launched in 2014 and I've tried it several times over the years. It was one of those perfumes I wanted to like but it just didn't move me. I ran over to the local Sephora to spray it so I could give a better review but they don't seem to carry the line anymore. My memory is that there was a little of a chemical smell that put me off.

Demeter Honeysuckle is another one I tried to find to review but was unsuccessful. It has decent reviews on Fragrantica and it's cheap as chips so I'll definitely keep my eye out for it.

Are there any great honeysuckle scents out there that I've forgotten?

You can read part II of finding the perfect honeysuckle scent by clicking here.

Top photo: USDA Agricultural Research Service, Charles T. Bryson, photographer. Chasing Fireflies print by Sylvia Pimental. Le Chevrefeuille bottle from www.AnnickGoutal.com website. Artwork from The Strange South website, but originally by Lee Brown Coye, 1948. Bumblebee photo from www.thewhitepaintedwoman.wordpress.com. Perfumes my own.