While the best beauty advent calendars are akin to shrunken-down beauty counters from grand department stores, the best perfume advent calendars channel hours of spraying and sampling at high-end perfumeries. (Just have your coffee beans on standby, so you can reset your nose between eager sniffs.) This year, brands such as Diptyque, Acqua di Parma, and Penhaligon’s have distilled their storied collections into clever gift sets that offer something for every kind of fragrance lover.
For the minimalist—preferably one with a strong sense of irony—Juliette Has a Gun’s Not an Advent Calendar puts a spin on the traditional calendar. Its six gifts, all with the same single-note scent, are meant for the days between Christmas and New Year’s. By contrast, Penhaligon’s sweets-themed set is like a candy store of scents, offering perfumes, candles, lotions, and more for the first 24 days of December.
Vogue’s Top Picks for the Best Perfume Advent Calendars:
Ahead, take a peek inside the best perfume advent calendars of 2024, and prepare for an exquisitely scented end to the year.
Jo Malone London Advent Calendar
- Release Date: Available to shop now.
- Price: $495
- Best For: Known for unisex fragrances designed for layering, Jo Malone’s distinctive scents will appeal to anyone who’s inspired by nature. From Wood Sage & Sea Salt to Lime Basil & Mandarin, the scents channel oceans, orchards, and other stars of the natural world.
- Why We Love It: Illustrated with bows, ornaments, and Christmas trees, the celebratory set is bursting with some of the brand’s most beloved scents, including Poppy & Barley and Peony & Blush Suede.
- Vogue’s Standout Product: The Lime Basil & Mandarin cologne has a crisp, zippy scent that’s hard to resist.
- What’s Included: Filled with 25 gifts, the calendar is stocked with colognes, candles, body and hand washes, and lotions.
Diptyque The Advent Calendar
- Release Date: October 11, 2024
- Price: $495
- Best For: Featuring classic and seasonal candles in scents ranging from Baies and Roses to Friandise (French for “sweet treat”), this calendar would make anyone light up. If your giftee is a crafter, that’s all the better: The set is shaped like a sewing kit.
- Why We Love It: Though Diptyque is known for its crisply elegant, black-and-white packaging, the calendar shows off the playful side of the French brand. It features colorful illustrations from the contemporary British artist Lucy Sparrow, who once staged an entire grocery store made of felt.
- Vogue’s Standout Product: The Feu de Bois candle, with its smoky notes of birch and juniper, channels a crackling fire in a fairytale cottage. I burn it like clockwork at this time of year, and it never fails to create an atmosphere that’s at once cozy and refined.
- What’s Included: The 25 gifts include candles, eau de parfums, and scented pendants.
Glasshouse Fragrances Advent Calendar
- Release Date: Available to shop now.
- Price: $275
- Best For: The avid traveler will get a thrill out of exploring scents inspired by dreamy destinations. With scents such as Kyoto in Bloom, The Hamptons, and A Tahaa Affair Devotion, the fragrance collection makes every day smell like a luxury resort.
- Why We Love It: Every perfume lover knows that discovering a new scent feels like finding a rare gem, so it’s fitting that this calendar is shaped like a jewelry box. With designs from Australian artist Eirian Chapman, the calendar can become a keepsake box after every one of its treasures has been unwrapped.
- Vogue’s Standout Product: On a gray winter day, there’s nothing quite like a spritz of A Tahaa Affair Devotion to channel a sun-dappled beach in Polynesia. Concocted out of coconut water, sea salt, and tropical flowers, the fragrance comes as a candle, a perfume, and a room spray in the gift set.
- What’s Included: The rosy-hued jewel box features 24 miniature versions of the brand’s bestselling products, including candles, perfumes, hand creams, body lotions, and scents for the home. Extra goodies include a lip balm and a keepsake Christmas ornament.
Maison Margiela Advent Calendar
- Release Date: Available to shop now.
- Price: $120
- Best For: The seven-day calendar makes for a fragrant final countdown. For the hostess who’s frantically preparing or the friend who’s burned out on shopping, the set will add a touch of delight to the last week of the year.
- Why We Love It: Margiela’s Replica scents have a way of transporting anyone who takes a single sniff. The scents here evoke vibey settings ranging from a fireside nook to a jazz club and a beach, providing a momentary escape from the holiday madness.
- Vogue’s Standout Product: The set includes a trio of products in the Lazy Sunday Morning scent. Layering the shower gel with the body lotion and lighting the candle will fill the air with fresh and floral notes of pear, lily of the valley, iris, and white musk.
- What’s Included: The set includes three eau de toilettes, two candles, and a miniature shower gel and body lotion, all from the Replica collection.
Acqua di Parma Holiday Advent Calendar
- Release Date: Available to shop now.
- Price: $650
- Best For: The sophisticated scent-lover who knows an eau de toilette from an eau de parfum (and would never call either a cologne), will appreciate the variety within the set. Not only does it offer a range of scents; it also has different concentrations.
- Why We Love It: A citrusy cologne from Acqua di Parma is always a welcome gift, but it’s even more appealing when presented in a lemon-hued box that dusted with holiday cheer. The calendar features golden artwork from French architect and designer India Mahdavi, who also designed London’s bubblegum-pink Gallery at Sketch.
- Vogue’s Standout Product: Cologna, which comes as a cologne, shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, body lotion, and even a soap within the set, has a fragrance that’s dear to Vogue writer Christian Allaire’s nose. “Colonia is a fresh, citrusy scent that suits any occasion,” he reports. “It includes key notes of lemon, bergamot, lavender, and patchouli. A few sprays of this is like drinking a tall glass of orange juice.”
- What’s Included: The 25-gift assortment offers colognes, eau de parfums, eau de toilettes, shower gels, body lotions, candles, shampoo, and conditioner.
Penhaligon’s Advent Calendar
- Release Date: Available to shop now.
- Price: $570
- Best For: Anyone with a sweet tooth and a love of fine fragrances will be charmed by the limited-edition set. It’s shaped like a tower of bakery boxes, and has a keepsake treat—a gingerbread-man charm—tucked inside.
- Why We Love It: As a fragrance brand with a royal warrant, Penhaligon’s has loyalists including Charles III. This definitively proves that it’s fit for a king, or anyone who deserves the royal treatment.
- Vogue’s Standout Product: The Luna Eau de Toilette nods to the season with notes of fir balsam, but its additional notes of jasmine, orange, and rose make it more nuanced (and, ironically, more evergreen) than a standard holiday scent.
- What’s Included: The 24 gifts range from candles to eau de parfums, eau de toilettes, colognes, soap, body washes, and lotion. There’s also a keepsake Christmas charm.
Juliette Has a Gun Not an Advent Calendar
- Release Date: Available to shop now.
- Price: $160
- Best For: The giftee with a penchant for irony will appreciate this cheeky take on traditional advent calendars.
- Why We Love It: Instead of counting down to Christmas, the set was designed for use between Christmas and New Year’s Day. It’s the perfect gift to help prolong the delight of Christmas morning, even several days later.
- Vogue’s Standout Product: One of Vogue’s favorite perfumes for women, Not a Perfume is a modern scent based on a single note: Cetalox, or synthetic ambergris. (Unlike traditional ambergris, this fragrance was born in a Firmenich lab; not derived from sperm whales’ intestines.) Warm, spicy, and woody, it has a minimalist appeal. The scent infuses every product in this set, and the miniature Not a Perfume is a nice introduction to it.
- What’s Included: The six gifts include a perfume, a bar soap, a body lotion, a candle, a hair and body mist, and a hand cream.
