Getting To The Core of DKNY’s New Delicious Candy Apples Collection
I’ve yet to meet someone who doesn’t love DKNY’s Be Delicious fragrance — it’s one of those scents with universal appeal: fresh, fruity, and sparkling. This month, Donna Karan is expanding her line of Delicious fragrances with the launch of DKNY Delicious Candy Apples, three scents inspired by a classic American treat: the candied apple. Think about red apples dipped in caramel or a hard sugar coating — how when you bite into these sweet fruits, you hear a crunching sensation as you penetrate the crispy outer shell, unleashing an explosion of hardened syrup into your mouth that makes you smile like a kid enjoying the treat at a local fair. As you take the next bite and work your way into the middle, you then savor the fresh apple pulp. Similarly, the Delicious Candy Apples scents feature Be Delicious’ signature apple heart but are surrounded with sweet candy and floral notes.
But don’t expect to have the scent of actual candied apples recreated. Sure, that might have been the inspiration, but you’re not really going to smell a simple mix of caramel and apple notes (or maple syrup and apple, or any other such obvious olfactory experience). The Sweet Caramel Candy Apple fragrance, for example, is much more of a fruity floral fragrance than anything else (and the florals actually overpower the fruity notes). This particular scent features top notes of candy apple, pear, and marshmallow, a heart of jasmine petals, muguet and violet leaves, and a caramel and vanilla dry-down. When you first spray it on the skin, you sense that fruity freshness but, within a few minutes, the basic notes you’ll detect are muguet and jasmine — which makes for a romantic and feminine scent, but which might be surprising if you’re expecting a sugary sweet smell. The caramel and marshmallow notes are imperceptible, so I did find the name a bit misleading. But, if you know what to expect, you’ll be satisfied with the result.
Ripe Raspberry, meanwhile, features top notes of raspberry, apple, and lime, a heart of peonies, lilies, and cola accord. I really enjoyed this fragrance — the raspberry note is striking, titillating your senses and awakening them, and the slightly sour quality of the berries works as the perfect contrast for the sweet, fragrant peonies and lilies. The end result is youthful without feeling pre-teeny, and it has a charismatic, mouth-watering freshness to it. It’s a genie in a bottle.
Last, there’s Juicy Berry, a fruity melange of black currants, blackberries, pears, lychee, nectar, rose petals, apple blossom, and base notes of sandalwood and blonde woods. It’s probably the most straight-forward of the three fragrances: while I found the blackberry note most perceptible, it didn’t overshadow the other fruity notes and so it felt like a delicious fruit cocktail. I will say, however, that the scent does feel younger than the others, like something I would’ve worn in my early 20s (as opposed to now that I’ve officially crossed the 30 threshold).
The Ripe Raspberry is my absolute favorite of the three, with the Sweet Caramel ranking second, and the Juicy Berry coming in third, but they’re all pretty delicious — even if the candy motif isn’t quite applicable to them.
DKNY Sweet Caramel Candy Apple, $55; DKNY Ripe Raspberry Candy Apple, $55; and DKNY Juicy Berry Candy Apple, $55 each. Visit Sephora.com
