Snow Angels and the Cherry Reckoning: Dawn Spencer Hurwitz Plays Winter Two Ways

If you think holiday perfume must smell like cookies and cinnamon, Dawn Spencer Hurwitz just packed a snowball and aimed it at your expectations. Her limited edition Snow Angels arrives for Holiday 2025 with a name that suggests quiet light, fresh air, and that crystalline chill right before your nose tingles. DSH has a knack for texture and memory, so I’m not expecting gingerbread. I’m expecting hush, brightness, maybe clean musks and a cool floral shimmer, the scent equivalent of blue-white morning light on fresh powder. If her winter work has taught me anything, it’s that she can sketch a season without syrup.

Then come the cherries, and this is where it gets intriguing. Black Death Cherry and Cherry Daydream sound like siblings who do not share a closet. The former reads to me as nocturnal and inky, a liqueur glint, maybe a shadow of bitter almond and woods, the kind of cherry that bites back. The latter, Cherry Daydream, sounds like the soft-focus take, airy and poppy, a fruit note you could wear with lipstick and knitwear and not feel like dessert. I’m not here for corporate sugar highs, and DSH usually isn’t either. If she’s entering the cherry chat, it’s because she has something more textured to say.

A few things I’ll be watching when these hit my skin:

• How cool is cool in Snow Angels. Is it a glacial musk veil or a powder-kissed snow globe that sticks? Longevity matters when a scent leans sheer.
• The bite factor in Black Death Cherry. I want tension, not cough-syrup nostalgia. Give me woods, spice, or smoke to cut the gloss.
• The lift in Cherry Daydream. If it floats, it needs a backbone so it doesn’t vanish at lunch.

Layering thought that won’t leave my head: a mist of Snow Angels under Cherry Daydream could tilt cherry into frost, like a pink sky over fresh snow. And for the goths among us, Black Death Cherry over a clean skin scent might turn the volume down just enough to make it office-appropriate with a secret.

Bottom line. Snow Angels reads like winter for minimalists. Black Death Cherry looks primed for the dark gourmand crowd. Cherry Daydream feels like a flirty cherry you can actually wear in daylight. I’ll report back once my samples arrive, but this feels like DSH doing what she does best, and not playing it safe. Limited edition means don’t dawdle.