The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
With a Kiss landed in 2010 as part of Victoria's Secret's Beauty Rush collection. The body mist format, lighter than an eau de toilette, lets the scent sit close to the skin rather than project outward, which fits the romantic, almost flirtatious premise of the name. It is a straightforward floral-fruity composition built on two pillars: raspberry and peony. No dense base, no smoky undercurrent. Just a bright, sheer, berry-forward mist designed to make the wearer smell like the moment right after someone leans in close. The raspberry reads fresh and slightly tart at first spritz, less jammy than confected, the way real fruit smells before sugar gets involved. Once the peony enters the conversation, it softens everything without burying the berry.
Peony and raspberry rarely anchor a composition together, which is part of what gives this mist its character. Raspberry brings a tart, jammy brightness that reads as fruit candy at full volume, but here it sits at mist concentration, so that sweetness softens into something more like a flavored lip balm. Peony fills in the floral cushion: cool, slightly green, with a dewy quality that keeps the raspberry from going syrupy. The combination works because neither note is allowed to dominate for long; they trade off as the mist warms on skin. It is a deliberate lightness, more like a scented exhale than a constructed pyramid.
The evolution
The opening is all raspberry. Bright, tart, almost like cracking open a jar of preserves in cool air. There is no real citrus sparkle underneath, just fruit, so the opening reads as one-dimensional in the best way, like a single chord struck cleanly. As the initial burst settles, the peony starts to surface, pulling the raspberry from candy territory into something more floral. The two notes merge into a soft, sweet, slightly powdery blend that smells less like fruit and more like skin that happens to be warm and berry-tinged. The drydown loses most of its distinct edges. What remains is a faint, clean sweetness, the kind of trace scent that clings to a sweater or the inside of a wrist. On fabric it tends to last longer than on skin, sometimes holding a ghost of that raspberry-peony blend into the next day. On skin it fades quietly, which is typical for a mist format.
Cultural impact
Within Victoria's Secret's own roster, With a Kiss sits alongside Berry-themed scents like Pure Seduction and Love Spell, sharing that family resemblance of sweet, fruit-forward compositions. Its peony-raspberry pairing offers a slightly different twist within that lineage. The mist format and Beauty Rush packaging placed it in the casual, everyday category alongside its shelf-mates. What distinguishes With a Kiss within the Berry family is the peony's presence.
