Sunset Babe

Sunset Babe is the beach entry in Missguided's Babe line, and the brief is written on the bottle: a sunset gradient of orange into teal, with a scent to match. It opens on mango and sweet orange, thick and juicy rather than sharp, with a faint warmth of spice keeping the fruit from reading as squash. The heart is where the holiday framing lands, pairing white jasmine and orange blossom with creamy coconut so that the effect is somewhere between a floral and a sun cream, which is very much the point. Coconut is doing most of the work here; the flowers are there to give the fruit something to bloom against rather than to be admired in their own right. Underneath, musk, amber, soft woods and vanilla build a warm, slightly powdery base that keeps the whole thing on the skin for longer than the price would suggest. It is not a subtle fragrance and it does not try to be. Projection in the first hour is generous, the sweetness is unapologetic, and anyone who finds coconut-vanilla combinations cloying will find this one hard going. Wear it in summer, on holiday, or on a grey British afternoon when you want to smell like somewhere else. This is the eau de parfum, which is a separate and considerably stronger product from the Sunset Babe shimmer body mist sold alongside it.