Melanie Martinez - Cry Baby

Top Notes: Milk, Strawberry, Forest Fruits Middle Notes: Powdery Notes Base Notes: Caramel, Woody Notes Melanie Martinez Cry Baby Perfume Milk is a gourmand eau de parfum built around a milk accord, and it commits to that idea more completely than almost anything else on the shelf. It opens on milk, strawberry and forest fruits — strawberry milk, essentially, but the dark berries underneath keep it from reading as a children's drink. There is a waxy, slightly cosmetic facet in the opening too, which the house describes as a lipstick accord, and it is what gives the sweetness an adult edge from the first minute. The heart is powdery. The brand calls it a baby lotion accord and that is exactly right: soft, clean, faintly talc-like, the smell of a nursery rather than a dessert. This is the section that does the emotional work, and it is also the reason the fragrance has the cult following it does — powdery-lactonic accords are strongly nostalgic, and this one is aimed squarely at that response. The base is caramel and woody notes, and the caramel is burnt rather than buttery, with a slight bitterness that stops the whole thing collapsing into sugar. The woods underneath are dry and a little dark — the house calls them sinister, which is marketing, but there is genuinely something shadowed holding up the sweetness. Expect six to eight hours with moderate-to-strong projection in the first two, then a close, powdery-sweet skin scent.