Sowmya GibishA few years ago, cherry in a perfume meant cough syrup or a lollipop you’d outgrown. Then Tom Ford put out Lost Cherry, and the note went from childish to expensive almost overnight. Now half the fragrance shelf has a best cherry perfumes version, which makes picking one a bit of a minefield.
Do you want the sweet, boozy kind or the tart, almost sour kind? Should it sit quietly on your skin or fill the whole room? And do you really need to spend Tom Ford money to smell good? If you’ve been following the fruity gourmand wave we flagged in the best perfumes of 2025, cherry is the note leading it. Here are four cherry perfumes worth knowing, from the splurge to the one that costs less than lunch.
The Splurge Tom Ford Lost Cherry
Unisex
Perfumer
Louise Turner
Fragrance Family
Amber Floral
Notes
Top: Black cherry, bitter almond, cherry liqueur
Middle: Sour cherry, plum, Turkish rose, jasmine sambac
Base: Tonka bean, vanilla, cinnamon, sandalwood, cedar
You already know this one, even if you’ve never bought it, because it’s the cherry every other brand spent the last few years trying to copy. It opens like a spoonful of black cherry and the bitter almond you’ll recognise from a lot of nutty fragrances, all soaked in liqueur, then calms into a powdery vanilla and tonka base that sits close after the first hour or so. Two catches though: it’s genuinely expensive, and that gorgeous juicy opening fades faster than you’d want for the money, so get a sample before you commit to a full bottle.
When You Want People to Notice Mancera Wild Cherry
Unisex
Perfumer
Pierre Montale
Fragrance Family
Aromatic Fruity
Notes
Top: Cherry, bergamot, lemon
Middle: Orris, heliotrope, patchouli, jasmine
Base: Madagascar vanilla, white musk
Mancera was doing cherry back in 2016, two years before Lost Cherry showed up and made the note famous. Wild Cherry is the loud, tart kind, a juicy sour cherry sitting on a powdery floral with patchouli and a touch of vanilla underneath, and it lasts most of the day with a trail people catch from across the room. The patchouli can read a little old-school on some skin, so it isn’t the easy crowd-pleaser the Tom Ford is, but for the price it punches well above what you pay.
For Everyday and Close to the Skin Carolina Herrera Very Good Girl Elixir
Women
Fragrance Family
Amber Floral (gourmand)
Perfumer
Quentin Bisch, Louise Turner and Shyamala Maisondieu
Notes
Top: Black cherry, bitter almond
Middle: Rose, tuberose
Base: Vanilla, cocoa
My sister picked this one because she wanted a cherry that wouldn’t get her side-eye at the office, and it does the job. This is the softer, grown-up cherry, black cherry and almond melting into a little cocoa, and the creamy base reads more like one of those plush vanilla perfumes than a fruit bowl. That closeness is the point for some people and the dealbreaker for others, because it barely reaches past your own skin and the cherry fades quick into the base, though it’s the prettiest of the four if you like your sweetness quiet.
The Budget Find Zara Cherry Smoothie
Women
Fragrance Family
Floral Fruity
Notes
Top: Cherry, almond, plum
Base: Peru balsam, heliotrope, hawthorn
This costs less than a cinema ticket and still smells like something three times the price. You get a clean cherry and almond with a bit of plum, sweet but not sticky, closer to the scoopable stuff in our ice cream perfumes roundup than to the dark, sexy cherries above. Longevity is the catch, since like most Zara scents it fades in a few hours, but for a first cherry or a cheap thrill, you can’t really complain.
One more thing if you came here for the Lost Cherry smell without the Lost Cherry price: the dupe people in the region keep going back to is Maison Alhambra Lovely Cherie, and it gets you most of the way there for a fraction of the cost.
Yazhini Manimudi
Sowmya Gibish
