If you were to travel back in time twenty years or so and see what I was doing on a random weekday afternoon, you might find me browsing at Parfumerie Douglas in West Philadelphia. I might have been buying a nail file or a sparkly hair clip, and I was certainly sniffing my way through the perfume section, especially a shelf holding Sui Dreams, Sui Love and, best of all, Anna Sui’s eponymous debut fragrance from 1999. That powdery rose scent in its black-and-purple, rose-embellished bottle is still a favorite of mine.
Anna Sui recently celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of her brand’s foray into fine fragrance by launching a quintet of new scents: the Wild Wonder collection. All five were developed by perfumer Jérôme Épinette, who has worked on Sui’s fragrances since 2017’s Fantasia, and the face of the collection is Scarlett White, the daughter of model and singer-songwriter Karen Elson. Elson herself is a longtime Sui “muse,” and there’s a feeling of generational continuity with the packaging for Wild Wonder, as well: the gilt rosebud cap is shaped just like the black rosebud cap of the original Anna Sui perfume (now known as Anna Sui Classic)…
