WIDIAN
ROSE ARABIA – COTTON

2024

PERFUMER
Marie Salamagne

lemon
green tea
honey

orange blossom
heliotrope
jasmine

cedarwood
vanilla
patchouli

‘The innocent sugared clouds. This fragrance evokes the gentle purity of fresh lemon and green tea drying in the summer sun. It begins with a soft, airy sweetness, like the delicate scent of sugar-dusted cotton candy drifting on a warm breeze. The fragrance unfolds with notes of clean, crisp orange blossom and jasmine, where a whisper of vanilla, reminiscent of cozy afternoons wrapped in fluffy blankets. As it lingers, subtle hints of wood and patchouli create a serene, comforting aura. Cotton: the innocent sugared clouds is a tender, nostalgic journey to a place of pure tranquillity and simple joys.’ – Jovoy

As someone who’s been a fan of Widian’s releases around the time of Cotton (especially Samar), Cotton was not really one that I was as interested in. And it does pretty much what I expected it do; which means it’s by any means pleasant, but not a fragrance that I’m excited about too much.

Now there’s cotton and there’s cotton candy. When I think of cotton, I think of soft, airy, fluffy, but perhaps also clean. Here you get a soft floral texture for the opening, but it’s quite sweet and more cotton candy like after. Depending on what expectations you had beforehand, you may like one or the other better. I was personally hoping for something fresher and cleaner and found it instantly too sweet. I have heard the opposite from others (who perhaps expected a full-on sugary sweet cotton candy from the start).

I get a lot of the heliotrope (almond powder vibes) initially and after a while the floral facet fades and leaves a more generic sweet fluffy cloud. In a way, it wears like a trendy gourmand-leaning hair -or body mist. Much better and less cheap-sugary smelling drydown than almost any of those, mind you, but it’s a significantly more expensive fragrance for this direction than many others as well.

There’s nothing wrong with Cotton; I think it’s pleasant, given that I get almond/tonka bean scents and a lot of vanilla, rather than sugar. It does give off the coziness that one would look for in a scent like this, but it doesn’t do much else for me. It’s not on the level of the 3 contemporary Widian’s that I tried in the period before it (Samar, Ginger, Yasat)  and overall, I’d say Cotton is forgettable for me.