On Tuesday, the sunscreen brand Vacation debuted three body sprays — the trendiest item in fragrance this year — one to correspond with each of its eau de toilettes.
At $24 each, the body sprays will be the most accessible point of entry to the brand’s fragrance collection yet, making them a potential introduction to the brand for Gen Z and Gen Alpha. “Our interpretation of [working to reach younger customers] is to make the designs feel a bit more fun and youthful than our eau de toilettes, which are a little bit more elevated,” said Lach Hall, Vacation’s co-founder and executive chair of marketing, noting that the juices themselves are “lighter, brighter versions” of the eau de toilettes. The body sprays also feature Vacation’s most playful, colorful packaging yet. Prior to launch, the brand had gathered 3,000 sign-ups for a waitlist across email and social media promotion, Hall said.
Body spray is huge right now, as has been previously reported by Glossy. According to Circana, sales of hair and body mists in the prestige market hit $474 million in 2024 — a 94% year-over-year increase — making it the fastest-growing segment within prestige fragrance. More brands are joining the conversation, with recent launches from brands like Kitsch and Touchland, while brands like Sol de Janeiro, Phlur and Kayali continue to grow their portfolios.
Ulta Beauty is investing significantly in Vacation’s body sprays, which are exclusives for the retailer. Hall noted that Ulta encouraged the brand to launch the category in light of the format’s current trendiness and that there was also customer demand for the category expansion. At Ulta, the body sprays will be featured on an end cap for three months.
When Vacation debuted its Classic Lotion in 2021, it did so with the express purpose of creating “The World’s Best-Smelling Sunscreen,” a statement it also plastered on the product itself and on its website. It describes that scent as having been developed with an Arquiste perfumer, a niche fragrance house and a “world-famous” scent, with notes of coconut, banana, pool water, pool toy and swimsuit lycra. It’s “all of your best sunscreen summer memories, applicable on demand,” the brand states.
That Classic Lotion was the brand’s intro to the world; it was the product it “pre-launched” with, in April 2021. By June, the brand made its formal debut, adding another couple of sunscreens to the lineup, including Vacation by Vacation, a $60 eau de toilette.
Initially, the eau de toilette was essentially a marketing play for the Classic Lotion, said Hall. But, “it was such a runaway success from day one, that we kept it and leaned in and decided to go, ‘OK, well, what’s next?'” In 2024, Vacation introduced After Sun by Vacation, also $60, which corresponds with the scent of its After Sun gel and features notes of “aloe vera gel, green tea verjus, aqua de colonia, minibar gin and line dried open weave linen.” In early April, Grand Cuvée by Vacation joined the lineup as the brand’s third eau de toilette. It features the scent of the brand’s Chardonnay Oil SPF, which, Hall said, was much-requested. It includes notes of “argan, amber, vanilla bean, peach eau de vie and an oceanic hint of sun-washed sails,” per the brand.
In spite of Vacation’s success with fragrance, Hall and his co-founders are adamant that the brand’s main focus will always remain sunscreen. “We didn’t come out from the start thinking we’re going to have fragrance as part of a sunscreen brand, but it very organically and naturally [has fit] into our story, because working with perfumers has been a big part of what we do, from day one, trying to make the world’s best-smelling sunscreens,” he said.
At Ulta, where Vacation has been sold since 2022, the perfume is sold alongside the SPF, rather than in a separate department. This, Hall said, is a first for any brand. It is also effective marketing, because “it helps tell the ‘World’s Best-Smelling Sunscreen’ story for us and allows people to actually experience the scent, on the spot, because they have a tester.”
When asked why people may want to wear sunscreen as a scent, Hall noted that beachy, coconut-forward scents have always been popular. But, as far as why they may purchase from Vacation, specifically, Hall pointed to the brand’s credibility. “We legitimately have a right to make a sunscreen-scented perfume because we make sunscreen,” he said.
Vacation also sells candles, which are not directly tied to its existing sunscreens. As such, it can be more playful in the fragrance category. Vacation also sells $5 air fresheners, which are sometimes used as gifts with purchase, mostly on its Amazon sales channel. According to Shannon Comstock, the brand’s svp of marketing, outside of the brand’s sunscreen, the actual eau de toilettes are the best sellers, followed by the candles and then the air fresheners.
While the brand is excited to officially debut its body sprays this week, it is not looking to make its fragrance category a larger piece of the pie. Twenty percent is a comfortable portion of the business for it to be at, Hall said. “The competition in the fragrance space is formidable. It’s not something we want to [play in] in a way that’s directly going after fragrance brands,” he said. Instead, fragrance sales will remain a marketing supplement to Vacation’s SPF sales.
