Bath and Body Works ~ Columns

In the course of my daily walk home from work, I stroll through a large retail district in my city. My route takes me past a shopping mall, a Sephora, two large department stores, an H&M, a Target and a Walgreen's (among other retailers). As I took a shortcut through the mall one evening, it occurred to me that I haven't spent much time checking out the fragrance options available from mass market retailers. Niche and indie scents get most of my attention these days, and while they are fabulous, I'm a firm believer that great scents can be found at every price point and in every corner of the globe. I know scents from mass retailers are often popular with Fragrantica readers and I wondered what fragrant treasures might be hiding from me in plain sight. 

Welcome to the first in a new series called Scents From a Mall. I'll be exploring fragrances, bath and body care lines, candles and other scented goodies sold by retailers typical to a US shopping mall. (Some of these are typical mall shops elsewhere in the world, too.) If it has been awhile since you've explored the American brick-and-mortar retail fragrance landscape, I invite you to follow along and discover some new pleasures. If you're a regular shopper at these venues, I look forward to hearing your suggestions and discussing favorites with you.

I think my choice for the first column is a logical one and I hope you'll agree. I paid a visit to a local Bath and Body Works, a retailer I've shopped for at least 20 years (though not so much these last few years). I can still remember when they were a new brand in the 1990s, but can a shopping center really be called a "mall" in the 21st century if it doesn't have a BBW? A quick search of their website reveals there are no less than 20 Bath and Body Works stores within a 25-mile radius of my location. Today, they have more than 1,600 stores worldwide, with locations in the US, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America and Australia.

I recall fondly the Juniper Breeze and Warm Vanilla Sugar hand lotions of my younger years. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, hardly a Christmas went by without at least one gift from Bath and Body Works being given or received. The constantly rotating selection of fragrances—with some perennial favorites like Moonlight Path, Japanese Cherry Blossom and Ocean always available—feeds our craving for novelty while ensuring we'll come back to buy our favorite "retired scents" when the brand makes them available again. 

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As fate would have it, I hadn't visited a Bath and Body Works store in...five years? I keep up with their news through social media and here on Fragrantica, of course, but I hadn't had a reason to step into one of their shops and give things a sniff in quite some time. I had a fair amount of catching up to do.

Much about the store is exactly as I remembered it: the overwhelming scent selection (I browsed BBW online before visiting the shop, to narrow my focus); the colorful displays; the friendly sales staff in aprons; the amazing deals. One of the most wonderful things about BBW is there is almost always a deal of some kind to be had, often a BOGO or "buy three for $12.50" kind of a thing. When they're discontinuing a line, you'll find even more savings (bins of Tutti Dolci products were deeply discounted at the shop I visited).

My first stop was actually in the men's corner of the store, to check out the repackaged Men's Signature collection. The new heavy glass bottles embody simple chic, with their minimalist white logo and black caps. I don't think any of these scents are new (wasn't Teakwood formerly Mahogany Teakwood?), but every scent in the collection is a crowd-pleaser. All are safe choices for work and gift-giving, not to mention very affordably priced at $34.50 for a 3.4 oz spray (though keep an eye out for deals!) My faves of the collection were spicy Bourbon and the gorgeous woody-lavender Teakwood. I found the sillage a bit lacking on some of the scents, but all of them have accompanying body washes and lotions to help extend the scent. (The Bourbon lotion in particular was strongly scented and lasted even through a handwashing with scented soap.)

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Next, I zigzagged back to the front of the store to a large display of the new At the Beach collection. The cheerful blue and bronze packaging on this collection had captured my attention a few weeks before, shimmering under artificial sunlight in a shop window next to beach blankets, beach balls, sunglasses and flipflops. (This particular display is what inspired the Scents From a Mall column, actually. Curiosity about the scents within that beach-themed diorama had me wondering how how long it had been since I visited a Bath and Body Works.) With fragrance mist, a mini perfume spray, shower gel, lotion, cream and a very apropos "Sand & Sea Salt Scrub," this line covered everything I might need to keep my skin looking good and smelling great this season. I was hoping for a pronounced coconut/suntan lotion aroma, and while I found the frangipani to be the dominant note, the creamy sweet coconut is there, along with ocean notes and sunny citrus. Overall, it's a nice approximation of American summers at the beach, bottled. I was unable to find the At the Beach mini perfumes and while the Fine Fragrance Mist would be light and pleasant for summer, the line's Ultra Shea Body Cream produced a near-perfect amount of sillage for this type of fragrance, in addition to baby-soft skin.

The Men's Signature collection and At the Beach were the fragrances I had "pre-selected" to review for this article. I carefully avoided the wall of candles and the overflowing bins of travel-size products, so as not to lose focus. What happened next is not at all what I planned (and if it happens with each trip to the mall, I'll quickly go broke in service of this column), but my curiosity was piqued and olfactory fatigue had not yet set in. While testing the different products in the At the Beach line, I noticed another display of products emblazoned with the word "coco..."

The CocoShea skin care line puts the emphasis on the moisturizing properties of its main ingredients: cocoa butter and shea butter. The three different scent choices—Coconut, Honey and Cucumber—are just the icing on the cake, and the product lines vary a little bit within each scent collection. The Coconut scent wasn't quite the type I was seeking. Honey always smells nice and I may revisit it again at the end of the season. But CocoShea Cucumber reeled me in with its cool and refreshing aroma of cucumber slices floating in a glass of ice water. Perhaps it was the heat of the day or the contrast of this green and clean fragrance after all the sweet aromas I had sniffed, but I gave in to temptation and moved towards the check-out counter with a tube of the CocoShea Cucumber Really Refreshing Foaming Scrub.

The nice young man who rang me up said, "Did you want to pick out another one? All of the CocoShea products are two for $20 today."

(Those deals! They're hard to resist!)

I hadn't planned to come home with anything, but soon I was leaving the store with one of the cute little BBW bags filled with the scrub as well as a CocoShea Cucumber Really Refreshing All-Over Mist. 

(Plus a tin of C.O. Bigelow Rose Salve. Sigh. I'm weak. I admit it.)

Have you visited a Bath and Body Works lately? What's your all-time favorite Bath and Body Works fragrance? Tell me about it in the comments.  See you at the mall!

Jodi Battershell (NebraskaLovesScent or "NLS") is a lifelong Nebraskan who transplanted herself to Philadelphia after a lifetime on the Great Plains. An appreciator of fine fragrances since childhood, she tried her hand at natural perfumery and fragrance-mixing for a number of years, ultimately concluding she was better suited to appreciating the fragrance creations of others. She is pleased to finally be putting her English degree to use as a writer and editor for Fragrantica.com.