Selena Gomez’s Rare Eau de Parfum Review: My Honest Thoughts

Smelling Selena Gomez’s Rare Eau de Parfum is like throwing on your boyfriend’s favorite sweatshirt over a lace bra while red heart emojis shoot up your nose. In other words, it’s comforting, quietly sexy, and makes you smile involuntarily.

Most people (including me) won’t remember the star’s first foray into fragrance—the now-discontinued Selena Gomez Eau de Parfum, which launched back in 2012, with fruity-sweet notes (think peach, blackberry, vanilla, chocolate, and coconut) that are catnip for tweens.

The Rare Eau de Parfum–Rare Beauty’s debut perfume–also contains chocolate and vanilla. But it’s almost like Selena’s baking skills have gone from entry-level to gourmet as this scent hits just the right amount of sugary sweetness to ensure this juice still feels grown up.

So what exactly does Rare smell like?

The first thing to note is that Selena Gomez’s Rare Eau de Parfum is classed as a gourmand or dessert-like scent. There are buzzy perfume ingredients such as pistachio, caramel, cocoa, and vanilla for sure, but these notes are almost the back-up singers here. What really jumped out at me when I first sniffed it was the pink pepper and ginger, which add a nose-twitching, zesty spiciness to the scent.

I also like that Rare lands on a bed of sandalwood and musk, which together mimic the warmth of skin, ensuring you still smell like a human being rather than a pastry or a bag of Haribo Starmix (a pet hate of mine with a lot of other gourmand perfumes).

Rare Eau de Parfum: My verdict

When a vial of Rare, covered in “Confidential!” and “Top Secret” stickers, landed on my desk last Thursday, I nervously spritzed the juice onto both wrists and waited for an overdose of sugar to hit my nose.

For the first few minutes Rare admittedly smells a little syrupy and saccharine. But then it starts to settle on the skin and rather than feel like a fly drowning in honey, I found myself taking in greedy lungfuls as it turned into the ultimate comfort food for my senses.