If you’re like me and you swap out your signature scent when cooler temperatures roll around—fruity-floral fragrances just don’t smell the same when there’s snow on the ground—you appreciate a good warm and cozy perfume, and this might be the coziest of them all.
Meet LUSH’s latest addition: Cardamom Coffee. More cardamom and less coffee, it’s spicy, complex and incredibly addicting—a tiny spritz lingers for hours and will have people turning around in the hallway at your office to ask you what you’re wearing (it happened to me more than once). The brand manages to capture all the things you love about fall and winter (cozy sweaters, hot coffee on a cold morning and yummy holiday desserts) in one scent that’s truly distinctive, and no, you won’t smell like a Bath & Body Works candle.
You May Also Like: The New LUSH Product That Turns Your Bath Into Jelly
If you’re not familiar with cardamom, it’s the predominant spice used in chai, which you’ve tasted before if you’ve ever had chai tea or a dessert flavored with the ingredient (if you haven’t, you’re missing out!). Known as the “queen of spices” in cooking in Asia and native to Ceylon and India, cardamom is frequently paired with other spices like cinnamon, clove, ginger (it’s part of the ginger family) and pepper.
What makes the pure cardamom oil in this fragrance unique is the inspiration behind it and the way it’s sourced. According to LUSH, the scent was intended to recreate the warm hospitality LUSH’s head ethical buyer, Simon Constantine, experienced while passing through a refugee camp on a buying trip in Syria. Constantine was handed a rich cup of cardamom coffee while at the camp, gifted freely by those who had lost nearly all of their belongings, warming his hands and his heart.
LUSH’s ethical buyers work to source the pure and unadulterated (nothing is ever added) cardamom oil (and all the essential oils used in the brand’s products) from all over the world—they even fly out and visit the farms and producers on a regular basis to check on the process from start to finish and make sure the oils are as pure as they can be.
The fragrance is available at Lush.com and is priced at $77 for 1.0 oz. and $155 for 3.3 oz. (the high concentration of pure cardamom oil is the reason for the higher price tag); there’s even a solid perfume for $16.
