Late Summer Perfumes: Scents to Welcome Autumn Beautifully

Late summer perfumes are more than just fragrances — they capture that bittersweet mood of August when the warmth of the season lingers, yet the first whispers of autumn are already in the air. If you’re looking for the best scents to wear at the end of summer and the beginning of fall, this guide will help you find perfumes that reflect the beauty of the season change.

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."— Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

August is like a Sunday evening — a time when you’re still savoring summer, but already sensing autumn’s gentle breath. At first, these are just subtle hints, like watercolor brushstrokes, but within a month or two they will turn into the vivid canvas of true autumn.

I live in the Alps, and here midday can still be warm, even hot, but the sun already feels different. The light is softer, muted, and the shadows — deeper and longer. Mornings are cool and fresh, and the air becomes especially beautiful then: thinner, clearer, like a spider’s web strung with dew, shedding its layers one by one. I’ve started closing the balcony door at night, though it’s still too early for a heavy blanket. The fields around us are slowly changing color and growing bare. I watch the tractor circle for hours, mowing down the last wheat stalks and tall overgrown corn leaves, casting long shadows across the road that seem especially stretched in early autumn.

At the end of August, I’m always overtaken by a certain kind of melancholy. It’s both the quiet sadness of saying goodbye to summer and the joyful anticipation of something new. Perhaps it’s the expectation of golden autumn, which in the Alps is especially beautiful.

When autumn first begins its path and its breath is barely audible, the very first change happens in the air. Nowhere is this shift as clear as in the mountains. In the final days of summer and the start of September, the air is cool and fresh yet still carries traces of moisture — like memories of summer. It feels crystalline and transparent, like water from a mountain spring. This is exactly the kind of air I find in Un Air de Bretagne by L’Artisan Parfumeur. To me, it doesn’t smell of southern summer; no, it is September air in the Alps.

The end of summer is also beautifully captured in The Smell of Weather Turning by Lush. To me, it’s not only about a sudden change in weather, when the sun slips behind the clouds and the air fills with ozone, but about something deeper — the turning of the season. It portrays that moment when the day is still warm, perhaps even reaching a peak of heat, but the morning has already arrived crisp and cool. I smell meadows in full bloom, sweet clover, wormwood, and fresh hay that hasn’t fully dried yet — a vivid, slightly bitter fragrance. It’s the moment when yesterday’s scorching heat gives way to the first refreshing breath of autumn mornings. When the sky remains bright blue and the sun still shines warmly, but the light and shadows already tell a different story.

By late summer, the air also grows full of the sweet scent of hay and stables. Austria is a country of fields and meadows, and I often see horses and cows grazing, watch hay being gathered and neatly stacked, and notice the first morning mist hovering above the fields. In Ruade by Parfum d’Empire I find this spicy, animalic essence of nature — dry grass and meadow, capturing the delicate moment of transition and summer’s quiet farewell.

This shift in mood makes its way into perfumery as well. I start reaching for something denser, like a light shawl you wrap around your shoulders when it’s not cold yet, but you already feel the chill of the season approaching. And there’s a silver lining: I can wear fragrances again that don’t feel right in the summer heat.

At this time of year, I crave tea scents — not the refreshing kind like Armani Yulong, but deeper ones, such as Elysian Lavender Milk Tea. I loved it at first sniff: like a soft plaid blanket you want to wrap yourself in while sitting on the terrace, listening to the rustling of dry leaves and sipping tea. It opens with the most beautiful lavender — not green and dewy like in Provence fields, but dry, hand-gathered, intensely aromatic. Then comes black tea — rich, thick, slightly tannic, like the first moments of steeping. And finally, milk: gentle, sweet, buttery, with a dollop of cream melting into the tea, dusted with dried lavender petals on top.

Another fragrance that feels especially right at summer’s end is Helix by Carner Barcelona. Though seemingly a summer perfume, it speaks to me of impermanence and the cycles of nature — what fades, only to return again. It smells of air, sea, and blossoms — melancholic, almost autumnal. It carries the low golden sun of early autumn and flowers savoring the last days of warmth.

And, of course, many of us know from childhood: you can’t truly bid farewell to summer without the scent of blackcurrants. In Junk by Lush I smell ripe berries with their glossy skins, their sweet-tart juiciness so true to life. It is the fragrance of summer’s end. I remember gathering heavy clusters of currants in childhood, later boiling them into jam to preserve summer’s gifts.

This year, I want to say goodbye to the season with scents of the sea and exotic fruit — because this summer belonged to them. While the warmth and sunshine still linger, I want to carry a bright memory of summer with me — Mangomina D by New Notes. To me, it smells of luscious ripe mango in all its juicy flesh and nectar, kissed by a sea breeze. It’s mouthwatering, like a mango dessert with a sparkling lemonade on the seaside.