Bath and Body Works Holiday Traditions

The other day, I went into my local Bath and Body Works expecting to find tons of Yuletide cheer and the entire store decorated for the Holidays. Well, the company must have changed their vision a bit for this season because the majority of the new items for Holiday don't come out until the very beginning of November. Pretty much, the store was decorated with the emphasis on the Fall based fragrances that are found in their Signature Collection. This was not quite what I was looking forward to.

However, I came across a table with their Holiday Traditions body products already out on them so what I was looking for was at least available in the store that day. You may remember from last year, that I stocked up on both Vanilla Bean Noel and Winter Candy Apple products and I still have many of those bought as spares left over. This year, I am more interested in smelling the two new fragrances that they released instead of purchasing more of the above mentioned two fragrances.

As a reminder to anyone that may not have smelled Vanilla Bean Noel or Winter Candy Apple before, I will put in brief descriptions of them before going onto my thoughts of the two newest fragrances. Vanilla Bean Noel is a blend of fresh vanilla bean, warm caramel, and rich, comforting cream. Winter Candy Apple is a blend of crisp apple, candied orange, and rich cinnamon spice. Now onto the two newest fragrances.

The first of the two new Holiday Traditions is called Yultide Pear Vanilla and this is the one that I was most excited for going into the store. This fragrance is a blend of poached pear, winter quince, toasted marshmellow, and vanilla sugar. With the description, I envisioned this fragrance as a slightly fruiter Vanilla Bean Noel with a a couple more layers of complexity. However, I found this fragrance to be a generic fruity/sweet fragrance that had little depth or staying power. I was very unhappy with this one.

The second of the two new fragrances is called Festive Vanilla Fig and I wasn't really interested in this fragrance at all, even to begin with. Brown Sugar and Fig always smelled like dirt on me and I don't really like the fig note in general. This fragrance blends fresh fig nectar, poached peach, vanilla extract, and decadant rum drizzle. I really didn't like one either, I found it to be very generic. It was mostly fruity with a little bit of spicy note.

I wish that I had liked those fragrances more because I am so happy that this year Bath and Body Works decided to ditch the glitter that clogged up all the shower gels last year. I guess tat I could stock up on Vanilla Bean Noel and Winter Candy Apple but I really have no interest or need to do that.

photo courtesy of Bath and Body Works