LaCroix stages of abstraction
LaCroix's new Sunshine flavor goes conceptual in a world of literalism.
I was picking up a few snacks while on my way to a friend’s place for dinner when I stopped to browse the stacks of LaCroix customary to most New York bodegas and grocery stores. I saw the usual suspects like Pamplemousse and Razz-cranberry, but I also saw a flavor, and concept, totally new to me in the world of LaCroix: Sunshine.
“What in the world does sunshine taste like?” I had to know, and the tagline of “Taste of … Wonder” did nothing to help. I did not buy the case because I did not want to lug it all the way to my friend’s place, and, perhaps selfishly, I wanted to return to have the mysterious box of sunshine-flavored water all to myself. But in seeing those cases of LaCroix with their Windows XP-esque design of rolling hills of sunflowers, my mind immediately went to a, in my opinion, classic Twitter thread: Yankee Candle’s Stages of Abstraction.
By Alex McMillan’s taxonomy, you can divide Yankee Candles into levels of abstraction starting with Level 1, home to the most straightforward of candles like Black Cherry, where “the scent represents a physical object where the object's aroma is one of its distinct properties.” By my understanding, LaCroix Sunshine would sit at Level 4, where “the scent represents an event with an intrinsic property. This temporal aroma is devoid of location or physical property, but a shared idea of the property is still understood.” An example of this on the Yankee Candle scale is Autumn Sunset. We can mostly agree on what sunshine is or what it conjures, but it is not tied to any tactile scent or specific place.
Sunshine feels like a radical development in the world of LaCroix, the omnipresent canned sparkling water brand, where, by my estimation, almost all flavors sit at the more literal Level 1. Think classics like Coconut (a polemical flavor and personal favorite), or Tangerine, or even the more creatively named Guava São Paulo or Pastèque, a.k.a. watermelon (LaCroix is very international).
I was surprised by this move towards the abstract as the world of fine fragrance, that is perfumes and candles, is going in the opposite direction, to an increasingly literal interpretation of the world around us. And specifically, literal interpretations of food, as seen in the booming gourmand perfume family.
This type of scent has always existed, or least since 1992 when Mugler Angel busted on the scene as the first gourmand perfume. But gourmands have reached new levels of popularity and innovation in recent years thanks to likes of D.S. & Durga Pistachio, which was launched in 2022 as a limited-edition one-off and became a surprise hit. Now, off-beat but recognizeable gourmand scents are the name of the game: DedCool Mochi Milk, Phlur’s Heavy Cream body splash, Ellis Brooklyn Guava Granita, all these scents launched in the last few months. You see this not just in mass but in the niche world too, among new perfumes like Rhubarb & Custard 1:29 by 4160 Tuesdays and Lilac Brûlée by Fzotic (both of which I want to try). The indie d.grayi brand is made up of all kinds of flavors from an Asian grocery store like Pandan and White Rabbit. The literalness is part of the appeal, I want to try them just to see how well they replicate a White Rabbit candy or a rhubarb and custard tart.
This change is notable as, for the past few decades, fragrance marketing has been driven by a sense of fantasy, with more conceptual ideas like Calvin Klein Obsession or Dior Sauvage driving much of the market. Even campaigns for the sugary Mugler Angel were selling extraterrestial glamour rather than the smell of cacao and caramel. But the marketing of those fragrances, with their much-parodied nonsensical, sex-driven and celebrity-backed ads, feels old fashioned today.
At the presentation of a NielsenIQ report on the fragrance market this past week, I learned that perfume brands stocked at Sephora are asked to populate their product pages with straightforward images of the notes promised in their scents: i.e., if you’re selling a strawberry scent, you better have some big ass photos of strawberries on there because no one is going to read the description to learn it contains said strawberry notes. And you see this before you even click into a product page: on the online fragrance shelf on Sephora.com, the names of the products themselves list a few standout notes. If consumers don’t know exactly what you’re promising, they’re going to scroll on by rather than click to find out.
Given the plethora of options on the fragrance market, this makes sense. There are so many launches today that we don’t have time to sit and imagine what a perfume named “My Way” is supposed to smell like. And if you’re gonna lead with your literal scent profile, you better be able to call out something recognizeable like vanilla and not some esoteric nonsense like galbanum (an underrated note, perhaps because few know what it even is).
I also can’t help but think this these fragrances appeal to a generation raised on symbolic representations of food. Gen Z might be too young to remember the Yoplait phenomena of the early 2000s that claimed to offer diet versions of desserts like key lime pie in low-fat yogurt form, but they were kids during the frozen yogurt craze of the mid-2000s. That was when we went to eat versions of desserts like tiramisu and Boston cream pie and raspberry cheesecake liquefied and then repackaged and swirled in frozen yogurt form. They were an idea of popular, recognizeable desserts reduced only to their flavor profile, devoid of the texture or nuances of the actual thing. (I’m not gonna lie, I miss my local Yogurt Land when you could get a pile of DIY fro-yo and toppings for $5).
And there is something exciting about tasting a homogenous goo labeled Oreo and realizing it actually does taste like Oreo (there is a fantastic 2018 New York Times piece on the lengths Japanese Kit Kat makers go to capture flavors like shingen mochi in Kit Kat form). But I think we also like these things in part because eating a dessert-flavored yogurt is more efficient than eating actual dessert, both for our lifestyles and our diets. And maybe we like our beauty products, like perfume, to smell like heavy cream and banana pudding because we’re afraid to eat actual food of such decadence.
Which brings me back to flavored sparkling waters. Apparently Coca Cola is rather threatened by the way seltzers and alternative sodas like Poppi and Olipop have threatened their market share, so much so they’ve launched their own prebiotic soda brand. I’m not much of a prebiotic soda fan, but the last time I looked at the Olipop aisle most of their flavors were reinterpretations of classic soda flavors like cream soda or riffs on Mountain Dew or Dr. Pepper. Why would you drink teeth-rotting Coca Cola when you can have one of those? While I never loved Coke, I am a fan of and impressed with the accuracy in cola-flavored seltzers from Hal’s and LaCroix.
LaCroix gets some criticism for being absurdly mild in flavor (I once read lemon LaCroix described as tasting like drinking a sparkling water while there is a lemon in the other room). I do think Spindrift, which contains actual fruit juice, is superior. But there’s only so far you can get with actual flavors.
I went back to buy the LaCroix Sunshine. I am still working my way through the case, trying to determine the flavor. LaCroix describes it as “a bright and sparkling blend of citrus and tropical zest, capturing the refreshing essence of a sun-kissed day in every sip.” It tastes like something I had in childhood that I can’t quite put my finger on; it conjures the taste of a lemon-lime or lemongrass gummy, juicy and citric but not tart. Like sunshine, maybe you’ll know it when you feel it.