Scenting down south 🌾🥃

Bravo’s Southern Charm inspires four fragrances & more.

For those mentally stable enough not to know, Southern Charm is a Bravo show that presumably began to showcase Southern gentility but quickly devolved into a cautionary tale about alcoholics in pastel. Season One kicks off with a tragic redheaded ingénue getting knocked up by a failed politician turned felon who compares being in prison to The Glass Menagerie. (The series contains more Tennessee Williams references than one might expect.) Enter the trust fund manchild who thinks he’s a genius because he regularly and without solicitation quotes Jack Kerouac (“the only people for me are the mad ones…”); the haunted heir with an age-inappropriate attachment to his guitar; the pathologically dishonest lawyer turned pillow mogul; his best bro who literally looks like a thumb yet somehow is drowning in women (he’s tall); the grande dame with a dog caftan line; and the sassy bombshell who comes in hot and only gets hotter. With characters named William Shepard “Shep” Rose III and Madison LeCroy, the show of course takes place in Charleston, South Carolina. And it’s easily the heaviest drinking and least mature group in the Bravoverse.

If you have our dog-like noses, you can practically smell the show through the screen: gin before noon, Bud Light cracked open at a fox hunt, salt air rolling off the marsh, cut crystal sweating on wraparound porches. It’s gardenia, sweetgrass, Spanish moss hanging thick in the heat. It’s cologne and humidity stuck to seersucker, a musk of sunscreen and sea salt. It’s last night’s bourbon poured heavy at a garden party you hardly remember. Southern Charm smells like summer: overgrown, overheated, and overserved. We’re scenting it now because the season demands it.

Magnolia by Santa Maria Novella

I’m painfully aware that the Southern Charm girlies are all wearing Flowerbomb, Baccarat Rouge, and Miss Dior, but I can’t recommend any of those in good faith. So I’m going with one they probably don’t wear but that actually smells like South Carolina. Magnolia grandiflora is native to Charleston and every garden has one, blooming as the air heats up. This perfume isn’t some abstract concept of magnolia. It smells like the actual tree: lush, creamy, and green, with a touch of humidity. The white rose and geranium up top give it lift, but the star is the flower itself: lemony, waxy, dense with late spring air. A little jasmine and champaca trail behind, like someone who just stormed off after throwing gin in someone’s face (in a *charming* way).

Sweet or shrewd? Shrewd in a sweet outfit.
Color? Milky pink.
Who on Southern Charm wears it? Whitney’s Italian model girlfriend who picked it up in Florence before visiting Charleston.
Film? Baby Doll (1956).
Room in the house? Screened-in porch.
Animal? Mockingbird.
Texture? Humid petals.
Signature drink? Spiked iced tea.
Favorite word? “Heavens.”
Bitch or brat? Bitch who says “bless your heart.”

Macanudo by Maison d’Etto

It’s possible that the greatest fragrance I’ve ever smelled was created by a horse girl. Yes, I am talking about Macanudo by Maison d’Etto—a perfume house inspired entirely by, as the founder writes, “the horses that have taken me on personal journeys.” Her horses have taken me on a personal journey too, let me tell you that much. I loved Macanudo before it was viral and I refuse to cringe as I type that, just as founder Brianna Lipovsky bravely refused to cringe when she decided to create a luxury fragrance line based around her many horses. Macanudo is the scent of the polo match. It’s sunlight and hay, it’s vetiver vetivering like no vetiver has ever vetivered. It’s a cigar being lit in celebration and wet dirt crushed under a leather boot. It’s Craig Conover lying to ex-girlfriend Paige DeSorbo about buying a horse because his other ex-girlfriend Naomie Olindo does actually own a horse. God bless America and all the beautiful horse girls in it!

Sweet or shrewd? Shrewd in the saddle, sweet in the sack.
Color? Worn mahogany leather.
Who on Southern Charm wears it? A girl at the bar rejecting Craig.
Film? Thoroughbreds (2017).
Room in the house? Mud room.
Animal? Regret.
Texture? Mane of a million dollar mare.
Signature drink? Mint Julep.
Favorite word? “Steady!”
Bitch or brat? Trust fund brat all the way.

St. Vetyver by D.S. & Durga

Shep absolutely visited the D.S. & Durga store in Soho during a boys’ trip, probably after a bottomless brunch, and declared St. Vetyver “his jam.” With notes of seagrass, cane sugar, and aged rum, it takes him straight back to the Bahamas, where he recently got his heart trampled, as we were all lucky enough to witness on Season 10. Now he’s known to drench himself in it while smoking a cigar and blasting Jack Johnson’s “Bubble Toes.” It’s a sharp, handsome scent, perfect for a man unafraid to send a very long and vulnerable text to a woman who’s already way out the door. And should Shep ever find a girlfriend who actually likes him, and whom he can resist cheating on, she might stumble across this bottle in his medicine cabinet and grow a taste for it herself. I find it feminine in its sweetness, and enjoy it on summer nights when I’m drinking like a Southern Charm cast member.

Sweet or shrewd? Sweet as the rum in his cup.
Color? Sunburned skin.
Who on Southern Charm wears it? Shep for sure, potentially Austen.
Film? The Beach (2000).
Room in the house? Pool house with a kegerator.
Animal? Golden retriever with arthritis.
Texture? Straw hat.
Signature drink? Dark ‘n Stormy.
Favorite word? “Rad.”
Bitch or brat? Brat because he’s too lazy to be a bitch.

Thé Noir by Le Labo

Smoky, sexy, fresh, and haunted—this is Kathryn Dennis in a scent, if Kathryn Dennis were firing on all cylinders. Kathryn is a tragic figure, groomed right before our eyes by Thomas Ravenel (of the Ravenel bridge, of course) and endlessly critiqued by the rest of the cast, slut shamed to hell by women in their 30s when she was basically a teen mom. Kathryn’s voice has a southern-spiked-with-Xanax drawl, a huskiness that comes from hitting the bowl and not giving a shit what anyone thinks. Thé Noir is smoldering and lush but fresh and light all at once. It stays with you and drives you insane. It’s addictive and life-affirming. It’s the kind of scent you wear to get revenge on your rich baby daddy, god willing. #JusticeforKathryn

Sweet or shrewd? Sweet.
Color? Iced tea amber.
Who on Southern Charm wears it? Queen Kathryn <3
Film? The Beguiled (2017)
Room in the house? Bathroom with a towel under the door.
Animal? Alley cat.
Texture? Vape smoke.
Signature drink? Mezcal on the rocks.
Favorite word? “Whatever.”
Bitch or brat? The bitch you love to hate.

📸📸📸 Camera Roll 📸📸📸
🐊🥀🖤 Deep South Edition 🐊🥀🖤

Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) paired with Gin Fizz by Lubin (1955).

Lana Del Rey waiting out Hurricane Francine with then boyfriend Jeremy Duferne at his house in Louisiana, paired with Un Jardin Apres La Mousson (A Garden After the Monsoon) by Hermes.

Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story: Coven (2013) paired with Spell 125 by Papillion.

Kate Hudson in the Skeleton Key (2005) paired with Haxan by Parfum Prissana.