SPRAYCATION: SUMMER FRAGRANCES + WHAT TO WEAR WITH THEM

Is there anything harder than sitting at your desk when it’s nice out? Fall lines may be trickling into stores, but outside it's still summer for another 7 weeks and everyone has left town except you (and me). It’s like the entire world is on vacation and posting on Instagram from a lounge chair in Positano. #ladolcevita #blessed. Kill me now. Of course you could roll into work in a sheer caftan thrown over a bathing suit. But if that won't fly, at least spritzing a summery fragrance with a beachy vibe should help stabilize your mood until the weekend.

Your workplace probably also frowns on serving rosé at department meetings (killjoys). So plan an off-site "team-building exercise" for a Friday at 1pm, change into one of the following outfits in the ladies', sneak out the door and don’t come back until Monday.*

six summer spraycation scents + wardrobes

Created as a whimsical limited edition last year to celebrate Terracotta bronzer’s 30 birthday, Guerlain Terracotta Le Parfum ($80 at thebay.com) was so successful it's now permanent. And it really evokes the legendary luxe bronzer with the same heady “solar floral” white blossom, coconut and musk scent.

Pair Guerlain Terracotta Le Parfum with sunkissed skin (preferably the safer faked kind, easily achieved with the new St. Tropez In Shower Gradual Tan), a silk print dress or caftan and classic French K. Jacques St. Tropez flat sandals.

Bobbi Brown Beach ($84 at sephora.ca and $74 at nordstrom.com) has a "jasmine and sea spray with Coppertone sunscreen" scent that is childhood-memory catnip, and smells like glowing skin warmed from a long day lounging on the sand.

For summer, layer the fragrance with Bobbi Brown Beach Body Oil ($40 at Murale and $33 at nordstrom.com), massaged onto arms and legs for gleam. Wear it with a sun-bleached (and maybe even gently frayed) pale blue chambray shirt (this one's JCrew), barely-holding-together trashed cut-offs and a pair of white Birkenstock Gizeh thong sandals.

The Body Shop has been killing it with their fragrances recently (see this year’s Smoky Poppy and last year’s Red Musk). New Fuji Green Tea eau de cologne ($20 at thebodyshop.ca and $25 at thebodyshop.com), a zingy nod to Bulgari’s 1992 game-changing Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert, is front-loaded with bergamot, lemon and mandarin elevating a flowery heart, and is perfect if full-ons florals aren't your thing.

Wear Fuji Green Tea eau de cologne with a deceptively casual but intensely glam Jackie-O-in-Capri look of white jeans, a fitted t-shirt, oversized sunnies and a Gucci hobo bag. Looks as fresh now as it did in 1970.

Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue Sunset in Salina ($112 at thebay.com and $99 at nordstrom.com), with its green vines and violet leaf opening into freesia and jasmine then melting into amber, perfectly evokes a languorous holiday day-into-night.

Wear Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue Sunset in Salina with this year’s Riviera staple: a white dress, black gladiators and an almost parodic dark faux tan. (Or go icy cool with pale skin like the model in this Maje dress throwing you a death stare for gazing at her.)

NB: a white dress like this one from Madewell is so feminine that it demands casual accessories or even bare feet, so no stilettoes and barrel-curled "basic b****" hair, please. Underdone sexy is sexier (and way more summery).

Bright with blood orange and grapefruit, warmed by jasmine and vetiver, Chanel Chance Eau Vive ($88 at thebay.com and $77 at nordstrom.com) is all stealth elegance. It smells light, fresh and energetic, but actually has tremendous depth.

Think along the same lines with your clothes, pairing love-worn, ripped and faded jeans with the surprise of a really unbuttoned (like Gigi Hadid-level unbuttoned) white silk blouse and a long gold necklace loaded with multiple sentimental charms. Finish off with espadrilles (Chanel if you have mad bank, regular if not).

Here's a worthwhile project: create an eau de cologne that actually endures on the skin. Perfume master Dominique Ropion has magicked Cologne Indélébile by Frederic Malle ($305 at Holt Renfrew and $180 at barneys.com) and it’s a keeper. Musk with narcissus are added to the classic eau de cologne notes of bergamot, neroli and orange blossom but unlike most iterations that vanish in 15 minutes, Cologne Indélébile lasts. That’s our rationalization for the eye-gougingly expensive price.

For your wardrobe, you could play against the priciness, or just dive right into fancy. Guess which tack we chose? Wear Cologne Indélébile with sunkissed skin and an airy black dress (sleeves are the devil, people), and Alexander Wang sandals or these smart slingback sandals from Madewell. Makeup? Nothing more than a bold matte lip and mascara. (Drops mic.)

Do you have a fragrance + outfit version of a vacation that helps you get from Monday to the weekend in the summer?

shoppity shop-shop

*Beautygeeks assumes no responsibility if you get caught.