Life in Kate-Land

Full disclosure: I wrote this review in bed after using it as my bedtime fragrance for several nights in a row this summer. I decided she needed her flowers after being my nighttime go-to for a month or more.

I got a travel size of Happy Tears this summer as part of my Scentbird subscription. I’d been sampling a lot of challenging and edgy fragrances in the quest for my perfect incense (more on that later), and decided to lighten it up a little and get something I knew would just be inoffensive and easy—and really, Happy Tears is both of those things, but not just those things.

This is definitely a sweet fragrance, but it’s not candy-sweet or gourmand. Upon spraying, gives you a fruity, orange blossomy sweetness, with a warm wave of vanilla coming through.  (The orange blossom is not sickly sweet, though. Don’t get scared off by it.) 

Middle notes of peach and jasmine come through after first sniff, and the jasmine is soft – not like some of those kindof screechy jasmine accords: it functions well to prevent this from going full fruit-salad.

The vanilla and musk in the base really do hold things down well. Even after a few hours, you still get the middle notes coming through pretty strongly.

There’s something about it that really feels/smells warm, like stone fruits on a summer day. I’ve been wearing it to bed during the peak heat of summer in New Orleans. The top & middles are nice to doze off to, and the base notes and lingering middles are still pleasant to wake up with in the morning.

A 30ml is only in the $65 range, and for that price, to me, this is full-bottle-worthy for summer.