The Body Shop
The Body Shop
79 votes
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Magnolia's creamy warmth mingles immediately with bright Fuji apple, creating an almost nectarine-like sweetness that's distinctly fruity rather than floral. The osmanthus amplifies this brightness with a faintly apricot-tinged florality, whilst the composition feels remarkably fresh and clean, as if you've just bitten into fruit at dawn.
The cherry blossom emerges as the top notes fade, revealing a powdery, slightly honeyed floral heart that's unexpectedly soft and almost cosmetic—not in a negative sense, but with genuine delicate prettiness. The fruity accords linger beneath, now muted and candied, creating a gently sweet mid-stage that feels both comforting and slightly anonymous.
Within four hours, the scent has become a near-invisible skin scent, the hinoki cypress providing a barely-there woody whisper rather than any genuine base persistence. What remains is a faint, faintly sweet floral haze, more felt as a gentle warmth on the skin than actually detected on the nose—if longevity were audible, this would be a diminuendo rather than a fade to silence.
The Body Shop's Japanese Cherry Blossom Cerisier du Japon arrives as a whisper rather than a declaration—a fragrance that prioritises delicacy over projection. Arnaud Winter has constructed something genuinely ethereal here: the magnolia and osmanthus in the opening create a creamy floral bed, whilst the Fuji apple cuts through with crisp, almost tart brightness, preventing the composition from becoming cloying. The heart reveals why this fragrance bears its name—the cherry blossom note sits at centre stage, rendered with surprising subtlety, more about powdery softness than the heady, almost cosmetic sweetness you might expect from a 2008 body spray interpretation.
What makes this scent compelling isn't its presence but rather its intimacy. The hinoki cypress base—often woody and austere in other compositions—feels almost aqueous here, a pale shadow rather than an anchor, which explains the notorious longevity issues. This is a fragrance that exists in close proximity: a skin scent, a second-skin scent, something you'd catch only when someone leans in. The accords reveal why it succeeds in certain moments: that 76% fruity content prevents it becoming a generic floral cologne, whilst the 52% synthetic note-marker suggests some aldehydic shimmer rather than pure naturalism.
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3.1/5 (86)