The Empties Edit: LORE Lil Softie Eau De Parfum

In an industry where there is an overwhelming amount of product launches daily, The Empties Edit helps you cut through the noise. To help you find your new beauty and wellness favorites, this series highlights the tried-and-true products that our writers can’t live without.

When’s the last time you had a bowl of cereal? Not a dry bowl, but one where the Lucky Charms marshmallows are soaking in a bath of ice cold milk. Except, I’m not talking about breakfast at all. Instead, cereal milk is one of the most attractive notes in my new favorite fragrance, LORE’s latest eau de parfum, Lil Softie. 

Developed by the perfumer Elena Ruiz, Lil Softie is described as a “cocooning cashmeric musk” with soft, milky silage as addictively comforting as a bowl of cereal. The fragrance actually opens with the sweet aroma of pink pepper and cereal milk, before evolving into a skin-tight ambery musk and clean cotton. 

I’m a longtime fan of a clean-smelling fragrance with a wardrobe full of scents like LORE’s Sublimity, Byredo’s Blanche, and Courreges’ C. But, Lil Softie is a ‘lil different. It’s more comforting than sterile, more milky than laundered, and more playful than expected. 

On my skin, the aroma wears like milk, but with an ever-so detectible floral. To pull out the cereal scent even more, I layer it with Noyz’s Only Human Mylk de Parfum, a skin-like fragrance milk with notes of vanilla, cedar wood, and the same ambroxan as Lil Softie. It makes the fragrance smell even sweeter as the base musk notes settle in.

But, the fragrance has more to offer than just scent. Housed in an ergonomic glass and aluminum, the glasswork bottle is an interpretation of André Thuret’s 20th century hand-blown forms. Meanwhile, the cap doubles as a candle holder and makes the fragrance even more attractive as a household item—just like the cereal bowls in my kitchen.