A Thousand Wishes For You

A Thousand Wishes For You is a fragrance of beautiful contradictions, where Bath & Body Works ventures into unexpectedly dark territory. The opening gambit is startling: rose absolute emerges not from a pristine garden but from wet earth itself, that mud note lending a raw, almost fungal quality that strips away any pretence of polite florals. This is rose as compost heap poetry, decomposing and regenerating simultaneously. The heart takes this gothic sensibility further with chocolate and plum creating an overripe, fermented sweetness that borders on putridity—intentionally so, it seems. Vanilla absolute attempts to smooth the edges, but instead highlights the oddness, like placing a silk ribbon on something wild and barely tamed. Meanwhile, there's a whisper of allium, that onion facet adding a savoury, skin-like muskiness that some will find repellent and others will find utterly compelling. The base is where Aaron Terence Hughes reveals his hand: Thai oud's barnyard funk marries ambergris and musk in a composition that smells simultaneously animalic and expensive. Patchouli and sandalwood provide a woody foundation that prevents complete olfactory chaos, though only just. This is for the fragrance obsessive who's smelled everything twice and craves something genuinely peculiar—someone who finds beauty in decay, who understands that the most interesting flowers are often those just past their prime. Wear it when you want to make people lean in, uncertain whether they're attracted or alarmed.