So Hooked on Carmella

Dear So Hooked on Carmella fans, I, too, hold a candle in my heart for this perfume! I remember purchasing it 10 years ago, in a Duty Free at the airport in Atlanta. It smelled so good, perfectly balanced and lasted all day. One of Benefit's best, I still remember exactly how it smelled! I liked to layer it on top of the Flowerbomb lotion and together they created the most soothing little scent bubble. I still have my bottle for collector's item purposes but the juice is long gone. However, there may be hope yet! I have never smelled anything remotely close to So Hooked on Carmella since it's release UNTIL last week. I went to Claire's looking for fashion glasses and stumbled upon their new fragrance collection. I was so surprised, never have I seen "sophisticated" perfumes in a Claire's store. I went through and sampled all 5 frags and "Latte a la Caramel" immediately struck me! There's a definite echo of SHOC within the DNA in this frag. Lasting power is so-so but for $20 bucks and the chance to reinvoke even a sliver of SHOC- it's worth it! There aren't any entries for the new Claire's fragrances on Fragrantica but I'm hoping that that will change soon and open up more discussion about them. But I'd be remiss if I didn't share the good news of "Latte a la Caramel" here with you all now. Of course I purchased "Latte a la Caramel" and also " Lait de la Fraise". Both smell amazing! Happy smelling!

Carmella, sweetie you smell just lovely! This is the second perfume from Benefit with which i have fallen in love (the first being Gina). Sweet vanilla and amber...such an intense amber though , it's presence is sublime and mixed expertly with the perfect amount of vanilla making this perfume sweet but not too sweet, oriental but not heavy in that direction. The beginning is very light citrusy and a hint of florals can be felt just lightly, but oh man the amber, oh so caramelly and charming - i know other ppl feel the vanilla is the dominant note here,but on my skin it's the amber - fortunately! Love it, projection nice, silage ok - nothing that's gonna blow your mind, duration... well this is where I fault these juicy concoctions from Benefit : they need to last a little bit longer,i mean i'm not complaining, for their price range it's actually ok : now i'm going on 4 hrs, and knowing the other fragrances from Benefit, by the 5th hour it'll be almost gone....if it would last 6 - 7 hrs it would be perfect. But all in all lovely fragrance. Later edit : The name is soo spot on : "hooked" on carmella yes I am ! It's my new perfume obsession! And about the beginning on me it smells like peach/pear ice-cream, then comes the vanilla-amber mixture.So ... unique? Yes it is unique, and delicate and addictive!

This is a lovely fragrance with lots of sensual appeal. Many people think that caramel should be in the fragrance pyramid, but I think this is just because of the name. In actuality, this fragrance dances around caramel, hinting at it, giving the impression of it, but never explicitly broadcasting this note. At first spray, it is very sweet and vanilla. It comes out a bit heavy and single-note-ish but the dry-down sets in quickly and very soon this density is lightened by the citruses and florals, deepening the complexity. it feels luxurious and indulgent, like wrapping oneself up in cashmere. A must-have staple for fans of sweet, sexy, amber scents.

How odd to open sweet warm caramel with a sour lemon!? In spite of that I find myself craving the dissonant notes. Like a strange piece candy that once the first tart lemony coating has dissolved you are left with a delicious grainy melting vanilla center. In the end I'm really delighted by this. A soft dusty caramel with a just hint of lemony sourness lingering. It has a light but pleasant projection. A very subtle and dreamy gourmand, with an understated elegance. Smells wonderful on the cuff of my sweater. I find it uniquely delicious. The tiare really blossoms in the heat with this one. Longevity is good on skin, great on clothes.

Seeing the notes, I am rather confused. And an oriental floral? I would never have guessed. Either way, what this fragrance is is extremely yummy! I get the most amazing sweet milk and caramel, with vanilla musk undertones. Definitely gourmand, but not overly sweet. This is a comfort scent for sure, warm and cosy and softly sweet. It's certainly not a dressy fragrance, nor is it very perfumey. This is for being at home and snuggling with your boyfriend, wrapped up with a book on a rainy day or for putting small children to sleep. Inviting, reassuring and delicious, this is my favourite gourmand scent.

This is a VERY sweet scent, but I adore it. On me it starts with a pina colada / tiare mix (I think the rhubarb + grapefruit smells like pineapple). Soon a thick, luscious caramel emerges - I often find "caramel" notes in perfumes don't smell like actual caramel or don't smell edible - this one definitely smells like some kind of caramel, pineapple upsidedown cake with a little rum. Strong sillage. Men seem to love it. Compliment getter for sure. I usually wear it as a "sexy" gourmand for nights out in the summer. Can be cloying if overdone.

never have i ever come across a perfume like this. i have looked high and low but nothing has replicated this smell. how i pine to wear this and smell it again. why they ever discontinued this is beyond me. it was warm caramelly deliciousness. this had the best staying power of any perfume ive ever bought and the price tag wasnt even expensive. everyone could smell this on me and i used to get so many compliments on it from random strangers. i miss it. i dont want something similar i want to wear something near identical.

This was my first perfume purchase ever and I was in 10th grade at the time, little did I know that reaching for this was where my gourmand-loving nose would first fall for a fragrance. It’s incredibly sweet and yummy. It simply smells like a warm, Carmel and vanilla dessert, or warm and sweet pastries in a bakery. I still have juice left in the bottle because I was very stingy when it came to using it as it was expensive for my 10th grade wallet and I wanted to save it. The projection was never that great though.

So Hooked on Carmella is one of my favorite perfumes hands down. It's very distinct from other scents and it really stands out on the skin. I always receive compliments when I wear this fragrance, and it has amazing lasting power. I spray it on before I go out at night, and literally the next morning my skin and clothes still smell the same as if I have just applied it. It lingers on your skin and in the air with a pleasantness that you will always remember.

this is my signature. I have a lot of perfumes but none of the others I own make me take a step back and go 'wow' when I take the lid off and smell it. This Is like vanilla ice cream, drizzled in hot caramel sauce and then sprinkled with desiccated coconut. I cannot give this creamy creation enough praise better than pudding better than orgasms better than actually eating vanilla ice cream with caramel sauce and coconut sprinkles better than everything!

This reminds me so much of bath and body works brown sugar & fig with the addition of a sweet lemon top note, a gourmand lemon. The dry down of both is so similar, centered around caramel and vanilla. The other notes look different but something about the composition of each makes them so similar. I love them both but love so hooked on carmella more really just for the fact it lasts longer than bbw. i could do without the lemon top note.

This is a beast caramel/sandalwood scent. I put this on before bed on cold winter nights and get 24 hours out of it. Very cozy and comforting, starting out gourmand and eventually turning woody. I see it is around $175 on Etsy for a used bottle. I purchased mine for $20 at Shoppers Drug Mart a few years ago, and it is definitely a keeper. I also have the Gina and Eva scents - all of them are beast mode. Benefit, we need more scents!

i love this one. it is so vanilla-caramel-like. very very nice. i think it is the best of the "name" collection from benefit. sprayed on clothes it lasts all day long. put only use three sprays (one on the hair two on the clothes) as it is very strong otherwise you might appear as a super sweet cloud that people can smell one mile away;). i know it contains citrus-notes, but i cannot smell them -.-.

Weirdly, this smells somewhat like a Pina Colada to me, despites not having pineapple or coconut as an official note. It's delicious and I got many compliments when I wore this. Warm but fresh, vanillic and beautiful. Addition from 05/04/18: If you loved this discontinued gem, try Dolce Garden by Dolce & Gabbana. It's not the same, but it has a similar vibe, at least to me.

I miss this precious gem so much!!! Why Benefit don’t produce any perfume anymore? Too bad, it seemed to sell very well though... I have memories with this perfume when I was in art-school and i remember Carmella made me smile in the winter with its juicy fruits and its piña colada vibe! Benefit, please! Give us back your joyful, playful, youth and crazy scents!✨ 🙏✨

I'm so glad I still have this in my collection since it's been discontinued. I'm almost afraid to wear it because I don't ever want to run out. This is what a caramel gourmond scent should smell like! It is absolutely just right! If Benefit ever decides to start producing this again, I will make sure to purchase several bottles - it is that good.

Very strong but thats what i like! Reminds me of Cream Soda. Only comes in a small bottle and is quite pricey but you don't need to spray too much as its quite heavy. I always have an extra spritz if i have my winter coat on and when i go to put it back on it still smells strong :) Unusual scent that is perfect for cold evenings to warm you up.

This is most definitely very sweet and creamy - quite like caramel. The thick sweetness of the vanilla and amber are dominant, but I also pick up on a slight spicy/woody oriental quality in the drydown. I really don't get anything floral or citrusy from this, as the notes would suggest. So far my favorite of the Crescent Row series by Benefit.

I went back to Ulta to get Sofia, but I fell in love with Carmella instead. It is indeed vanilla buttery sweet, but there's something else there that's green and lush and primitive. That sealed the deal for me. I can't find any citrus or fruit. Carmella is vanilla buttery, with a garnish of tiare, and the soul of a gorgeous tropical jungle.

very edible scent.. Vanialla caramel, with almost a praline and coconut.. I get the tiare flower but thankfully I dont get any citrus, no lemon or grapefruit (yuk, hate grapefruit!) but I have only been wearing for an hour so far.. avg/low sillage on me. -- at 3 hrs I can still smell if i touch my nose to my wrist..

Probably the heaviest and sweetest perfume I ever owned. Strong scent of vanilla and caramel, I honestly cannot smell any fruits in there. Smells very foody, my friends described it as "vanilla pudding". Pretty strong and long lasting. I am sad they dont make it anymore, it was wonderful for late fall and winter.

I love this one, it has nice lemony vanilla fragrance for gourmand lovers. My friend from work said it smells like chocolate. Lasting power is also very good more like perfume than EDT. I wish that they produce bigger bottle because 30 ml is not enough for me.I think I will buy this one again.

'So Hooked On Carmella' is my fave of all of them! It's so creamy, warm, cosy, rich, delicious, not too sugary neither too bland or over-done! Suits my skin perfecly! I'm gonna get this no doubt!

I absolutely love this perfume. I feel so warm and sexy when I wear this. Definitely a fall and/or winter perfume though. So warm and inviting. Carmella is the perfect name for her.

i tested it today and like it,i think best of this triology,smells like eating fresh lemon cake at a full of flower garden.but not longlasting.

love this perfume! reminds me of milky ways! all my friends know me by this smell. brilliant perfume, definitely recommend it

i will never throw out my empty bottle of this, it still smells like it did before even with no juice left. benefit whyyy

Amazing smell! Like coconut ice cream with whipped cream. So Yummy! :)

A very sweet fragrance with good sillage and longevity. Inoffensive--when used properly--and guaranteed to get compliments. This is a very rich fragrance, so no need to douse oneself with it! I wore this fragrance almost daily to work, and received only compliments. I did, however, only wear this during colder seasons, so caution! Lol. I could definitely see how this fragrance could be sickeningly sweet for some. Try before you buy (Ulta had testers). However, it was one of the VERY few fragrances that my mother didn't complain about (she gets migraines, and many/most perfumes seem to trigger them). I didn't get much fruit or sandalwood or florals with this perfume. It was mostly a tart, sweet vanilla... Bordering on "foody," but not quite there. I agree with the user below me, in that she mentions caramel. I could SWEAR caramel was a note, but it isn't listed. It definitely smelled of it on me, though!

Tried it on last night, and this one is definitely a gourmand-type scent rather than an oriental floral. The opening and middle notes are much better than the dry-down, in my opinion. So Hooked on Carmella starts off as a rather nice caramel based perfume with lashings of peony and a few other flowers I can't identify, but then as it moves on, it ends up becoming a sticky toffee mess that is frankly, a little nondescript.The sillage and lasting power were fairly good when I tried them out. Carmella manages to linger on my skin for several hours, and I even caught a whiff of it this morning (remember that it's an EDT!) An ok, comfort gourmand perfume, but I think I've smelt better. EDIT: Tried it on again today, and the weather was much cooler. Carmella smells much nicer in the crisp winter air! Amazing how fragrances can vary depending on the kind of air you expose them to.

God, this smells of caramels, vanilla, sweet edible gourmand goodness! So yummy! I honestly wanted to lick my wrist. Pretty long-lasting too and not as expensive as high end perfumes that I don't even like that much. The bottle is interesting and original. Very Benefit-like. Not tacky or cheap, just different. Smells sooooo yummmyyyyyyyyyy!

Sweet, rich, caramel-goodness. I could tell there was some kind of white floral (the tiare) in it as well- I have a particular affinity for them. It's a warm, comfort scent. I couldn't smell the amber much from the bottle, but it bloomed on my skin. It is long-lasting on me, I can still smell it fairly well 6 hrs later.

Deliciously intoxicating... This was a blind buy purchase. I'm not very much into gourmand fragrances, but this is just amazing. I've never kept re-spraying a perfume on me so much because it is just so delicious! I highly recommend this to anyone that wants to smell amazing.

I admitedly have I love hate relationship with this perfume. I originally loved this perfume when I first tried it at a Bnefit counter but then when I bought it it gave me a headache. It smells lovely but beware... it's definately strong!!!

Birthday present from my momma when I was like 5. I'd play with the box so I still have it in its little "house." It's a yummy nostalgic caramel scent to me. Kind of has the artificial aspect of a clean dance studio. Very Brooke Hyland.

I really love this scent...in the beginning. At first whiff it's tart and juicy with an underlying creaminess, but very quickly it turns into something that smells just like Palmer's cocoa butter. It's not bad, but I was expecting more.

Carmella is gourmand, gentle and plush as a Victoria's secret indulging body cream with fresh succulent peonies and roses spread out in a steam of aromatic vanilla and cream. Carmella may catch you in her ever so sweet snare ;)

So Hooked on Carmella is the right-most one in the picture. It's the lightest one among the three. A soft natrual flower scent, hmm... the Cyclamen. I'd smelt a real yellow Cyclamen before, it's exactly like it.

I love this one.Its so sweet and gourmand. at first sniff I had a sweet lemony vanilla. Then it gets more warm ambery vanilla. I definatly gonna buy this one. Staying power is wonderfull on my skin.

This one reminds me of a toffee near the skin and something peppery fruity around. One of the most interesting from this two series.

this might be the sweetest caramel scent in the world and quite possibly way to young for me, but I like it anyway. love the bottle.

I tried this out twice. The first time I kind of liked it although it isn't my usual "thing". I thought I could detect a note of coconut, which isn't officially in the ingredients - a smell that has happy associations for me, because in the summer our car always smells of coconut surf wax! I thought I could grow to love it and that it gave off vibes of a lively, energetic, sexy sort of person. The second time, it just seemed far too strong and I ended up washing it off because it was annoying me too much. Who knows what went wrong (do perfumes smell different on us at different times because of hormones?) but I won't be trying it again.

Benefit SO HOOKED ON CARMELLA is more of a gourmand than an oriental fragrance, well, provided that your idea of tasty eats includes extraordinarily sweet lemon-vanilla cake icing! This is actually the sweetest composition that I've sniffed since Jessica Simpson TASTE, which also has major diabetic coma potential. Are there flowers in here somewhere? Perhaps, if one digs through the thick layer of icing. But, to my nose, this seems pretty unidimensional, with no significant development at all, just a diffusion of sugar over time. Definitely not for me. It's time for recuperative black coffee and a pitcher of ice water!

This is a light and creamy scent. After Sofia I like Carmella most of the "women's name" scents by Benefit. It's a gourmand with caramel notes. Sweet and rich. But it doesn't last long on me.

Carmella was a delicious surprise for me. I was just browsing through the various Macy’s makeup counters and happened upon the Benefits So Hooked line. These are cute stylish perfumes in small colorful and fanciful bottles sold in boxes that are meant to resemble little character dollhouses. Upon sampling, I was immediately struck by the lusciousness of Carmella. This is a sweet and creamy fragrance that conjures up associations of cream soda, vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, and candy. But the scent does not stay stuck in that innocent young girl category because Carmella is also mixed with lemon and grapefruit which blend with the heavy sweetness in a rather sophisticated relationship. Lemon is not a scent that I associate myself as liking and I would never think to mix lemon, amber, and such vanilla sweetness together but it really works well in Carmella. Carmella makes me feel sweet and innocent, fresh and playful, mellow, and collected but also stylish and refined.

Everywhere I go it seems to be sold out already. It's been out only a few weeks right? There is a waiting list in the UK. This new line was created by a Chanel nose. It's not a completely complex perfume, but it is a good comfort gourmand scent. Since we are moving into the cooler weather months then it's naturally going to attract people. Vanilla never gets old and always gets compliments. This genre of perfume is the one that appeals to both men and women 9 out of 10. The price is decent for the amount you get. So hooked on Carmella is like a softly coconut vanilla fragrance that is not too strong nor fake smelling. I wouldn't call it a body mist type scent by any means. The florals keep it from being overly sweet. Even if it's not a single perfume you can wear, it's a great one to layer to add something delicious.

I've just been introduce to Benefit frag! by blind swaping this wonderful frangrance with a wondeful person Aspendina :) BIG thank you! it kinds of remind me of Jessica Simpson Fancy :0 and i loooooove Fancy but the Benefit on seems to be a little more creamy, tasteful, and i have to say super pretty long lasting on my smin !! I can really smell the vanilla like caramel side & powdery side witch i really love.. Even my lover loves it!! when i put a fragrance & he says: Wow!! you smell really good.. THAT'S A WINNER xoxo if you love sweet creamy tasty caramel vanilla side.. This on is for you..I f not stay away since it last alllllloooong time :) just yummy i don't really detect any flower in this one just gourmand vanilla & a liitle powdery side .. lovely

i got it just today when i was in sephora. i always wanted a benefit fragrance but most of the samplers where empty. so i sniffed the bottles and this one just smelled like caramel-vanilla, so i got it. at home i sprayed it on my arm and first thing i got was a very sweet sugary flower scent. it developed with some mint and finished off with a creamy, vanilla/caramel drydown which lasted quite a long time. i find it perfect, since the drydown reminded me of a less dusty version of the original dior addict with the citrus, amber and dark vanilla. the only thing i find a bit odd that it leaves a slightly sticky film on my skin. But overall a nice, sweet, citrusy vanilla scent :)

I unfortunately only have a small splash bottle of this perfume but am seriously debating buying a full spray bottle. I can never seem to apply enough of it and it gets all over my hands.. But that being said, it is definately a delicious, gourmand vanilla sort-of-caramel-but-not-as-sweet, amber bomb scent. When I first apply it, it is almost boozy, reminding me of sweet spiced rum. As it dries it reveals the sweet vanilla and soft sandalwood, making it smell like vanilla ice cream covered in warm caramel sauce and whipped cream in a warmed waffle cone. Definately one I reach for when it's colder, as it is also reminicant of freshly baked cookies.. Delicious.

Gourmand, sweet - but interesting enough with the rhubarb. This was my signature perfume at 16, and the boys looovvveeddd it. My boyfriend still swoons whenever I mention this - and I haven't had it in years. (It's discontinued, FYI) This is the kind of unique, caramel, fruity delectable perfume that just screams "I just got my drivers license and let's sneak out." It's kind of a L de Lolita Lempicka kind of vibe, without being that well known. It starts out fruity and interesting with the rhubarb and melts into warm caramel cookies. It lasts forever and definitely projects a cloud around you. Young, saccharine sweet and trying to be original.