The Avocado Toast of Perfume: Bal D'Afrique by Byredo

Growing up in the nineties, popular girls smelled like Gap Dream. If CK One was grunge’s “androgynous” low-maintenance answer to the aldehyde soaked chypres of the 80s (ie: vaguely lemony, cedar-inflected toilet water that smelled like nothing), then Dream, D&G Light Blue, and L’Eau D’Issey were the versions for chicks. These were perfumes that signaled a desire to smell nice, but barely. They all had that transparent 90s tea-stained effect with a watery dry down of plausible deniability. They weren’t frags that signaled glamour, or fantasy, or any degree of effort. In fact, these were frags that signaled the opposite— these were wet hair, messy bun, boyfriend’s hoodie perfumes. These perfumes rolled up in a Jetta with manual windows, a dent in the bumper, and a Ben Harper decal. They were easygoing and chill; perfumes that didn’t take life too seriously. These perfumes weren’t like other girls. In short, these were the pick-me perfumes of our youth.

While being a pick-me girl while I was in middle school still meant smelling like a girl, by the time I left college the tide had changed. This was the fragrance allergy era, which, like all forms of systematized oppression, was at its core a product of the patriarchy. The scent of sugar, or fruit, or flowers— in short the scent of a woman— became synonymous with screechy migraines, clogged sinuses, and worst of all, smelling “cheap.” The only acceptable scents were natural ones, and because no one actually liked the smell of pure lavender or orange essential oil, we instead schlepped to Aesop for gussied-up, bergamot-infused alternatives. These were natural, botanical smells that forwent the flower and betrayed the dirt it was plucked from. As a result, Santal 33— with its suede-textured opening of iris and leather— became the scent of beach waves nationwide.

While I truly love the dill-pickle, purple-scented sandalwood effect of Santal, I miss the salon-coded frags of the 90s that made everyone in orbit smell primed, pert, and willing. You can imagine then my delight in discovering a scent that contained all of the Skintimate shave foam notes of my 90s fantasies. A scent I had written off strictly because of its ubiquity. A scent with seemingly zero conceivable connection between its name and its smell. That scent is Byredo’s Bal D’Afrique.

The description on Fragrantica explains that Bal D’Afrique was “inspired by Paris in the late 1920's and its infatuation with African culture, art, music, and dance.” Random because this perfume doesn’t smell like Africa (never been) or an infatuation with African culture; It smells like the scented razor I snuck into summer camp when I was 11.

Bal D’Afrique is a contemporary pick-me perfume because it’s a prototypical clean girl perfume— one which TikTok bewilderingly memory holed during the clean girl™ movement— with top notes of shower-fresh bergamot floating across a cloud of violet, cedar, and jasmine. The opening is a blast of mouth-wateringly juicy citrus, less lemon and more yuzu or kumquat, with plump, sun-warmed flesh. It doesn’t smell like cherry chapstick per se but it makes you feel the same way— young, smooth, and prepared. There is something about the mix of narcotic jasmine, green violet leaf and warm cedar that recalls expensive salon shampoo. Bal D’Afrique smells like the Votivo Red Currant candle I begged my mom to buy me in middle school. It smells like a retail POS system. It smells like freshly shaved her legs, a gel manicure, and sweatpants that just came out of the drier. It smells like that girl with the Jetta in high school grew up and got Dysport and an e-mail job.

Bal D’Afrique is a perfume that could have been developed in a lab to appeal to Millennials; I should know, I’m obsessed! The smell satiates a profound nostalgia for anything 90s, the name is cancelable, and the bottle looks like an iPod. If you reach for the Hawaiian breeze-scented air freshener at Target, I urge you to give this frag a try. Bal D’Afrique might not shock or surprise you, but like the best pick-me girls, it will always be there when you need it.