Scent As Sentiment
How pure nostalgia sparked in me a long-sought appreciation for fragrance.
Despite my general vanity and an obvious affinity for pretty things, I’ve never been much of a perfume girl. I’m the beauty lover who can always justify another pinky-nude lip liner or texturizing hair mist — but for some reason, scent never excited me. Sure, I liked certain perfumes, but the concept of collecting a plethora of options held little appeal. Even when drawn to a particular fragrance, I rarely remembered to spritz it on before running out the door.
Recently, though, I’ve come to understand my relationship with scent as one of sentimentality, not consumerism. Unlike the rest of my beauty routine, I don’t need lots of options to consider each morning. In fact, the only way I’m able to enjoy fragrance is by wearing the same one often enough that it can be connected to a certain memory, location, or feeling.
I know I’m not alone in this, and perhaps the practice dates back to my teen years, long before I felt it necessary to psychoanalyze my relationship to products and purchases. I’ll never forget my first fragrance — Vera Wang’s Princess, gifted to me and my sisters by one of my aunts when we were just starting to become interested in the all-consuming concept of beauty. The light purple, heart-shaped bottle had a crown ring you could remove and wear on your finger, an accessory I now so deeply associate with my own girlhood.
When I became more aware of the many options in the fragrance space, I upgraded from Princess to Britney Spears’ Fantasy, an alluringly fruity scent with notes of lychee and white chocolate, in a hot pink bottle with tangy green gemstones. I bitterly recall receiving a gift set with the fragrance’s accompanying body lotion for Christmas in my teens, only to have TSA promptly toss the tube, which greatly exceeded the carry-on liquid size limit, at the airport the very next day (I had been really, really excited about it, and didn’t want to pack it in my checked luggage).
From there, I recall saving up for bottle after bottle of Victoria’s Secret’s Love Rocks, as a thirteen-year-old with my hair dip-dyed purple and hobbies including writing sad poetry, wearing arm socks a la Avril Lavigne, and learning to play guitar. The black-and-red bottle (So edgy compared to VS’s other pink-heavy packaging!) and notes of rebellious plum, violet and vanilla reaffirmed my identity as a Misunderstood Teen Slash Future Rock Star. I swore this was what it meant to smell like an adult — and a cool one at that.
I spritzed each of these perfumes with pride, and they served me well, complemented by the faint scent of my Teen Spirit Stick deodorant (I’ve since upgraded to Secret Clinical Strength, for those dying to know).
But my perfume journey more or less paused at this point in my youth, as I found myself drawn to other avenues of beauty, prioritizing purchases like eyeshadow palettes (’Twas the era of the Naked Palette, after all) and candles (B&BW’s 3 for $30 deal had me convinced that, so long as my room smelled good, my own personal scent didn’t matter much).
As I floated from teens to adulthood, fragrance fell off my radar, although the women around me made a point to prioritize it. My sisters spritzed Tocca’s Cleopatra like their lives depended on it, and my mother assured them it smelled awful. She was an Egyptian musk purist, and remains so to this day.
At the start of every year, I create a list of projected goals and accomplishments. Last year, I added a section called Leisurely Commitments. Unlike my loftier goals, these were small things I could try to work at every day, in an effort to make my life better, piece by perfectly mundane piece. Some of these commitments — and we can chat more about them another time, if you’d like — included taking vitamins, reading all my text messages, and wearing perfume.
Somehow, that last one genuinely felt like a task at which I’d struggle to succeed. Thanks to my time as an editor and creator, I’d amassed a closet of beauty PR mailers and multiple drawers dedicated to fragrance, but I rarely kept perfumes for myself. I was always quick to give them to friends or family looking for a new scent. There were a handful of specialty bottles that wowed me enough to be set them aside, but most ended up collecting dust until around this time last summer.
It was then that I received a sample of Aerin’s Hibiscus Palm Eau de Parfum — a warm, solar floral scent with notes of amber, lotus flower and ginger that smelled like hot sand and early sunburn. I spritzed and spritzed until the mini component ran itself out. The next week, on a Montauk road trip with Pat, we passed the Aerin store in Southampton and I picked up a larger bottle. I knew we’d be spending time swimming and relaxing on the beach, and I wanted to have it with me.
The whole long weekend reeked of Hibiscus Palm, in the very best way. I sprayed it as often as possible throughout our trip, and now it’s as if the smell is a literal postcard.
This connection of scent to memory was a breakthrough for me. I finally felt like I got it. I’d never understood why others connected so deeply to certain scents, but I’d found my reason. It was not an affinity for a particular scent profile like gourmand or floral, nor a passion for displaying bottles that doubled as micro-sculptures, but an opportunity to reminisce and revisit my travels scrapbook-style with nothing but my nose.
It didn’t take long for me to start packing for travel with fragrance in mind. When I visited home for the holidays, Jo Malone’s Ginger Biscuit served as the perfect carrier for memories of my mom and sisters decorating Christmas cookies. For a friend’s bachelorette in Montego Bay, Orebella’s Blooming Fire harvested memories of monoi flowers, tanned skin and pure sunshine.
I was sure to bring along specialized scents on my travels, but I began tying certain fragrances to specific seasons and stages of life at home as well. Jo Malone’s English Pear and Sweet Pea became an ode to the first spring Pat and I spent living in our shared apartment. This particularly sticky summer, I find Phlur’s Strawberry Letter a crisp reminder of my time, thanks to notes of cassis leaves, plum nectar and strawberry gariguette.
And on the rare occasion I go “out” out, my after-dark memories are always made tangible through YSL’s Libre Absolu Platine or Mugler’s Alien Goddess. I imagine spraying either of these during the day would be the equivalent of chugging a water bottle at 8:00AM and quickly realizing it’s actually vodka. They’re reserved for nighttime only, thanks.
For this past week’s trip to Seattle — my first time there, traveling with Pat for a friend’s wedding — Fresh’s Cannabis Santal was the epitome of a perfect choice. Notes of woody patchouli and earthy cannabis carried me through strolls around Pike Place market, a hike to Rattlesnake Ledge and hours lounging lakeside on the dock of our AirBnB.
I’m quite fond of my now fully-formed relationship with the perfumes in my collection. Each scent has the significance of a scrapbook, each bottle doubling as a time capsule for the memories made in that moment.
Perhaps I’ll never be the influencer with rows and rows of perfumes on display, nor the one who can take a quick whiff and rattle off the notes of any scent — but then again, I’ve got a lot of live to live, and so many trips to treasure. There just might be hope for me as a fragrance hoarder yet.
x BG