I was a coffee-lover long before I actually started drinking coffee. Coffee’s aroma fascinated me even when I was a chld, and I was ready for any and all coffee-flavored treats: coffee ice cream, the coffee frozen-yoghurt pops made by Tuscan Dairy Farms, the coffee cheesecake that my aunt occasionally baked, the chocolate-covered espresso beans that my grandmother kept in a candy dish in her living room.

As someone who loves the entire sensory experience of coffee, I can’t help but notice that a trend dubbed #lattemakeup has been making the rounds of TikTok, etc. And as someone who remembers earlier iterations of the monochromatic beige-and-bronze look and who overindulged in MAC Twig lipstick back in the 90s (but managed to ignore the arrival of Urban Decay’s Naked Palette in 2010), I won’t be participating in this round. All the same, I’ve been motivated to dig into my perfume sample stash for a few coffee scents.

Here are six picks. (“Nude” lip gloss totally optional.)

The original indie coffee scent: DSH Perfumes Café Noir (1997, Dawn Spencer Hurwitz) 
More than a decade before the Tom Ford brand rolled out a coffee perfume, Dawn Spencer Hurwitz‘s Café Noir was a cult favorite among the emerging online fragrance community. Dawn’s amber-y coffee fragrance, made primarily of natural ingredients, is an olfactory sketch of an evening in a Paris jazz club. Its opening note of bittersweet dark chocolate shifts into suggestions of rich Turkish coffee, the spicy-sweet smoke of clove cigarette smoke, and the worn, mellow wood of cafe tables.

The neo-niche coffee scent: Akro Awake, (2018, Olivier Cresp)
A few months back, I asked a sales associate at Scent Bar to recommend a “must try” from Akro and he made up a sample of Awake for me. I’m glad he selected this one. Awake evokes a big mug of very dark coffee with a hint of cardamom and a swirl of hazelnut cream, and I would like a second cup, please.

The fleurmand coffee scent: Phoenix Botanicals Narcissus Café (Irina Adam)
Irina Adam, the natural perfumer and herbalist behind Phoenix, tells us that this scent was “[i]nspired by myths of humans turning to flowers, as in the legend of Narcissus—and by a touch of hedonism, pleasures fully absorbing and quickly fleeting.” Using a coffee essence derived from roasted beans, as well as other pure botanical ingredients, she has created a delicate (and divinely inspired?) blend of floral and gourmand notes.

The cappuccino coffee scent: Hilde Soliani Buonissimo (2018)
Close your eyes and sniff Buonissimo, and you could swear you were inhaling the scent of an actual cup of hazelnut cappuccino—it’s rich, it’s creamy, it’s mouth-watering but not cloyingly sweet. Italian independent perfumer Hilde Soliani was rolling out gourmand fragrances long before TikTok ever existed, and this is one of her best.

The soulful coffee scent: Jazmin Saraï Parfums Otis and Me (2014, Dana El Masri)
“I would love to have another drink of coffee, now / And please, darling, help me smoke this one more cigarette, now / I don’t want no cream and sugar / ‘Cause I’ve got you now, darling…” If Hilde Soliani’s Buonissimo smells like a coffee concoction that could replace a dessert, Jazmin Saraï’s Otis and Me is something totally different: perfumer Dana El Masri has conjured up an earthy black coffee effect with the help of earthy vetiver and tobacco notes. She was inspired by the fantasy of drinking coffee in a diner with the soul music legend who sang the lines above.

The “Calgon, take me away” coffee scent: Cacharel Noa (1998, Olivier Cresp)
This isn’t so much a Coffee Perfume as it is a 1990s Perfume with a Coffee Note, but I think it deserves more attention so I’m including it. Noa’s soapy-clean musk and underlying swirls of spice make this fragrance the olfactory equivalent of drinking coffee in a bubble bath, as my friend Victoria “EauMG” says. (Oliver Cresp is also the perfumer behind Akro’s Awake, above.)

Do you have any favorite coffee-themed perfumes? Feel free to share in the comments!