I Wore Kylie Jenner’s Cosmic Perfume for a Week—and I Have Thoughts

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I’ve been closely following Kylie Jenner’s impact on the beauty world for nearly a decade. There was a time when I’d put my whole life on hold to quickly write a story if she teased a new Kylie Cosmetics launch on Snapchat. I visited the brand’s HQ in 2019, after the launch of Kylie Skin, and I’ve been diligently testing all the new formulas since it was relaunched under Coty in 2021. But even I—a self-proclaimed fraghead—was taken aback by just how fantastic the new Cosmic by Kylie Jenner really is. By all accounts, the first fragrance from Kylie Cosmetics is a must-have for anyone who gravitates toward clean, warm, and soft floral scents.

Cosmic Fragrance Notes
Top: Star jasmine (sensual, sweet, fruity), blood orange (citrusy)
Heart: Golden amber accord (rich, warm), red peony accord (sweet, floral)
Base: Vanilla musk accord (sweet, comforting, creamy), cedarwood (woody, warm)
Perfumer: Nicole Mancini, Coty

“It’s a warm floral; it feels immediately comforting,” Jenner tells me over Zoom. “It’s delicious, sophisticated. You could wear it day and night. It feels very personal to me, and it’s really just become a part of my everyday routine.”

It also became a part of my routine, because I decided to wear no scent but Cosmic for over a week. I wanted to see what kind of reactions it might get from my husband, my two-year-old son, and the people around me at work. And to be honest, the notes are right up my alley. Since having my son, I have gravitated more toward ambers, woods, and vanilla, as they sit on my skin in a really soft but beautiful way. I also wanted to test Cosmic’s longevity, and see how it played on my skin versus my clothes over the course of the day.

The reactions have been wholeheartedly positive. Our beauty editor, Tiffany Dodson, has also been testing it, and we both found Cosmic to be the kind of scent that really starts to meld with your natural skin chemistry. It’s not bold; it’s understated—but still warm, sweet, and feminine. To really experience it, someone needs to sniff your neck, not just walk past you. I have an aversion to sweet scents, but did not find Cosmic sweet at all—which was a bit surprising, given the sugar-heavy celebrity fragrance landscape. It does last all day on skin, and even longer on clothes. (“I don’t feel like I need to reapply this one, though I do always have my little travel bottle with me,” Jenner notes.)

Another big surprise with Cosmic is the bottle. Modern and minimalist, the sculptural glass vessel is completely unbranded. When I took it out of the box, my mom commented that it was reminiscent of Elsa Peretti. And it’s a far cry from the colorful, lip-shaped perfume bottles Jenner designed with her sister Kim in 2019. Also worth shouting out: the actuator (where the fragrance sprays out). The perfume sprays in an ultra, ultra fine mist—like a cloud, not a spritz—which makes the application process feel luxurious.

“We wanted the bottle to feel like an art piece. I wanted it to be beautiful in your bathroom or your bedroom, wherever you keep your fragrances,” Jenner says. “It makes me happy to look at my bottle. I just wanted it to be sophisticated and, you know, I feel like it’s pretty simple, but still is very different than anything I’ve seen.”

I ask Jenner how creating Cosmic differed from her KKW collaboration. “It’s really different. With Kim, I only had so much input. I picked my favorites and then kind of let her—she had more experience at the time—so I let her run with it and trusted her as well. So it was it was more of a collaboration,” she says. Jenner was far more engaged in developing Cosmic: “We went through 15 rounds of scents. I loved learning more about this world and fragrances and was definitely fully, fully involved."

Speaking of her famous family, Jenner says she didn’t really enlist her relatives to test Cosmic. “I gave it to all my friends to test—every time we would go out, we would wear it. I really wanted it to be perfect, and I wanted to appeal to a lot of people,” she says. “My friends would drown each other in the fragrance and then go out—and we’d come back at the end of the night and I’d ask, ‘Did anyone compliment you on your scent?’ I needed that validation.” Ultimately, she knew they’d gotten the right formulation when her friends, the Kylie Cosmetics team, and the people in her house all “loved” it. “Blindly, people kept gravitating towards it,” she says.

Cosmic is a warm, modern floral fragrance that Jenner hopes will speak to all generations, from teenagers to the Kris Jenners of the world. “My mom [is the best-smelling person]. You’ll never catch her on a bad day—she always smells amazing,” she says. “I would describe her as having a floral scent, too. I think that definitely inspired my first fragrance, because floral scents are very nostalgic to me.”

For the beauty mogul and her brand, Cosmic marks a new era. It’s the punctuation on a gradual, years-long shift toward a softer, more subtle aesthetic, with products that lean into easy, everyday glam—whether you’re Gen Z or a busy mom.

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