Xmas on screen 🎄❄️🎄

Four scents for festive movies & moments

Dec 23, 2025

On screen as in life, Christmas is about maximalism. Pristine fluffs of snow, overly decorated apartments, oversized sweaters, and the same songs looping until everyone feels vaguely hysterical. It’s an atmospheric, frenzied, and sensory-overloaded holiday. Perfume is similarly visceral. A single spray can summon a wine-fueled party, a quiet snowy city street, or a family home dense with pine-scented candles and raging emotional baggage. This week, we’re pairing perfumes with our favorite evocative Christmas moments on screen. Fragrant, visual, and emotionally unhinged in the most seasonally appropriate way.

Carol with Mitsouko by Guerlain

The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith (1952) and its corresponding adaptation, Carol, directed by Todd Haynes (2015), are two of my favorite pieces of art, period, Christmas or otherwise. My interest is, I’ll be honest, mostly libidinous. Carol is a woman for lesbians with mommy issues, the icy divorcée of our dreams. The adaptation is immaculate. Cate Blanchett in her fur and Hermès headscarf, smoking a cigarette in her oyster-colored convertible, white gloves on, intimidating the shit out of Rooney Mara at every chance—inject that shit into my veins. At that first tipsy lunch, the Therese of the book notes Carol’s “dusky and faintly sweet” perfume, “a smell suggestive of dark green silk.” Online sleuths and I agree this has to be Mitsouko (1919), arguably one of the most iconic perfumes of the 20th century (see also: Shalimar, Chanel No 5, Fracas, Mugler Angel). Medicinal and sharply green on the surface, warm and slightly feral on the drydown, Mitsouko smells like wealth, repression, and desire that’s been aging in the dark for decades. Elegant, yes, but also strange and unsettling, with something erotic and faintly evil brewing beneath its polished exterior. Carol is, let’s face it, not a good person. But she’s sexy, and so is Mitsouko.

Hot or cold? Slow to warm.
Who wears it? That sharky divorcée who will peace out once you get a lick of agency.
Place? Dim restaurant booth at lunch.
Animal? Dead fox worn around your neck.
Song? “Smoke Rings” by Les Paul & Mary Ford
Texture? Dark green silk.
Signature drink? Martinis before noon.
Favorite word? [Drags cig.]
Vampire or angel? Vampire in white gloves.

—Anna

The Real Housewives of New Jersey with È Sempre Natale by Hilde Soliani

When Anna goes high(brow), I go low—all the way down into the depths of my homeland with the Real Housewives of New Jersey. Back when we were a proper country, both RHONY and RHONJ aired holiday episodes. I still revisit them every year, as there’s nothing like Christmas at Blue Stone Manor (“mention it all!”) or in a Tuscan kitchen. Housewives really peaked with those franchises, and Jersey’s involvement of the wives’ entire families—and their weird interconnectedness of siblings married to other siblings and shit—makes it the coziest and most psychotic holiday watch. To get the full effect, you need to start with season 3, episode 4 (“Gobblefellas”), in which Teresa goes on this iconic Thanksgiving rant about how her sister-in-law Melissa made the grave mistake of bringing ‘sprinkle cookies’ to Christmas last year. Then, you can skip ahead to episode 8, which begins an incredible marathon of exactly four Christmas-centric episodes of disaster. Beautiful! As a tribute to Melissa Gorga’s cookies that were thrown in the garbage, I am recommending Hilde Soliani’s brilliant È Sempre Natale: there are definitely notes of sprinkle cookie, but more pronounced are notes of citrus, spices, and clove. It’s powerful, sweet, and insane—like lighting a festive candle while drunkenly fighting with your sister-in-law over dessert. Buon natale!

Hot or cold? Fresh out of the oven.
Who wears it? Women who drink wine made in their garage.
Place? Kathy Wakile’s test kitchen.
Animal? Dina Manzo’s hairless cat, Grandma Wrinkles.
Song? “On Display” by Melissa Gorga.
Texture? Cookie batter.
Signature drink? Coca-Cola and red wine.
Favorite word? “Madonn’!”
Vampire or angel? Melania Giudice (angel).

—Crissy

Notes on a Scandal with L’Air de Rien by Miller Harris

I’m going double Cate Blanchett this Sample Sluts. What can I say? She’s my favorite actress of all time and is in all the best movies (see also Tár, Blue Jasmine, The Talented Mr. Ripley), at least two of which happen to be Christmas movies. Notes on a Scandal (2006) is not a Christmas film of the sentimental, warmhearted variety; it’s lowkey about pedophilia. But it does take place over Christmas! Cate plays Sheba Hart, a wealthy, British art teacher who seems totally wholesome until she starts preying on a teenage boy (he *is* cute). Sheba absolutely wears L’Air de Rien by Miller Harris (also 2006), a British perfume that smells dusty and boho in the way an art teacher would, evoking old books and fancy libraries, but also is very musky and animalic in that it quietly reeks of sex. Tailor-made for the ultimate It Girl Jane Birkin, it’s all softness on the surface and filthy underneath. That is Sheba Hart ladies and gents!

Hot or cold? Cool from afar; warm up close.
Who wears it? Your horniest art teacher.
Place? Cluttered studio late at night.
Animal? Tabby cat sleeping on your chest.
Song? “Di doo dah” by Jane Birkin.
Texture? Wool cardigan, nothing underneath.
Signature drink? Red wine filled to the brim.
Favorite word? “Free.”
Vampire or angel? Angel who fucks.

—Anna

Phantom Thread with Chypre Mousse by Oriza L. Legrand

The only real holiday tradition that my husband and I have established is watching Phantom Thread. Every year, we watch it at some point between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and my husband cooks a buffet of foods featured in the movie: a Welsh rarebit (basically a grilled cheese), bacon, scones with butter, cream, and jam (not strawberry!), sausages, asparagus prepared hatefully, and something with mushrooms. We always stop short of having the mushrooms actually poison us, but who knows what this year holds! Phantom Thread is an incredible comedy. In it, the holidays are claustrophobic and maddening, and your partner is never not unintentionally driving you insane or intentionally trying to make you suffer. It’s perfection. Chypre Mousse is the scent of Alma foraging for mushrooms, plotting against her lover, famed couture designer Reynolds Woodcock, to get him to stop queening out for just one night. It will not surprise you that I love it because it smells like wet moss and leather and dirt—duh—but it has fresh notes of fennel and mint. It also smacks of mushroom, making it the kind of scent you’d think was divined by a 2020s indie perfumer, but it’s been around since 1914. Alma probably wore it and Reynolds hated it—my favorite kind of love story.

Hot or cold? Feverish chills.
Who wears it? Forest nymphs.
Place? Some rich asshole’s gorgeous country estate.
Animal? Victorian-era squirrel kept on a gold chain.
Song? “Auld Lang Syne” by Guy Lombardo.
Texture? Loamy.
Signature drink? A pot of Lapsang Souchong tea.
Favorite word? “Illness.”
Vampire or angel? Vampire in a gown designed by her gay son.