Scents Memory: The Best 90s Fragrances, Ranked

By Kristin Iversen

The ultimate 90s fragrance campaign.

Today brought news that Bath & Body Works will be bringing back some of its cult classic 90s-defining scents like Cucumber Melon, Plumeria, Country Apple, and others. Racked reports that this is part of “a new campaign called #FlashbackFragrance,” and “each fragrance will be re-packaged with updated designs and sold in the form of a shower gel, body lotion, a mist, and a body cream.” However, you won’t have much time to stock up on these nostalgia-inducing scents because they will only be sold from June 8th through July 5th, during the company’s semi-annual sale. So, you know, get yourself over to the Atlantic Terminal Mall while you can, because there’s a stand-alone Bath & Body Works there, believe it or not.

But so also? The re-release of these fragrances sent me into a bit of a sense memory (or scents memory if you will, omg, sorry) tailspin, because, you see, I was a pre-teen and then a teen-teen in the 90s and thus spent many a morning dousing myself in a variety of fragrances by first spraying them into the air and then walking through the falling mist. I also tore out countless fragrance ads from the pages of magazines because not only did they smell amazing but also they were art to me, pure art. My favorites were the cK one ads, because a) obviously, just look at them, and b) once a bag check guy at the Tower Records on lower Broadway told 15-year-old me that I looked like Kate Moss who had just been in the day before and that made me happier than I’d ever been in my life up till that point. (Also, yes, bag check: In the 90s in New York you would just give all your possessions when you went shopping at Tower or Urban Outfitters or The Strand and they would store your bags in cubbies and give you huge pieces of numbered wood or plastic or whatever that you would carry around instead. In all those “I miss New York of the 90s” essays, nobody ever talks about bag check. But they should.)

Anyway: 90s fragrances. Here are all (some of) the scents of the 90s, definitively ranked.

1. cK one
2. Gap Heaven
3. Egyptian Musk Oil (bought at the market in the lot by the previously mentioned Tower Records)
4. The Body Shop White Musk
5. Bath & Body Works Sun-Ripened Raspberry
6. Clinique Happy
7. The Body Shop Ananya
8. Bath & Body Works Cucumber Melon
9. Elizabeth Arden Sunflowers
10. The Body Shop Fuzzy Peach
11. Demeter Gasoline
12. Demeter Grass
13. Gap Grass
14. Bath & Body Works Juniper Breeze
15. Prescriptives Calyx
16. Gap Dream
17. Ralph Lauren Polo Sport
18. The Body Shop Patchouli Oil
19. Bath & Body Works Pure Freesia
20. Gap Om
21. Bath & Body Works Country Apple
22. Gap Day
23. Tommy Hilfiger Tommy Girl
24. Gap Earth
25. Drakkar Noir

Follow Kristin Iversen on twitter @kmiversen