Scent Stories

Last year, I wrote about the importance of sensory rituals in my life, and recently I added one more to the list. I started wearing perfume again. It had been many years since perfume was a part of my life; I fell out of the habit of using it regularly sometime in my mid-30s and then stopped entirely during the pandemic. As of last year, I had only two perfumes: a bottle of Hanae Mori Butterfly I bought sometime in 2017 or so, and a large bottle of Replica By The Fireplace I got in 2019. To give you a sense of how much I had been using perfume in the last 4 years, both bottles are still more than half full. But this hadn’t always been the case. A lot of memories have been surfacing lately of perfumes I used to wear when I was in my 20s and early 30s; for a while, I was obsessed with the idea of a “signature scent” – or, rather, a series of them. I think that had a lot to do with my search, at the time, for identity. Perhaps that explains why, after a certain point, the idea faded away; by my late 30s, I wasn’t searching anymore – I had found what I was looking for. Me.

But back to the present. Thanks to a confluence of factors, perfume came back into my life. For Christmas, my dad gave me a bottle of perfume he’d picked as something my mom would have loved to wear. It’s not something I would have chosen for myself – a heady gourmand fragrance, rather too sweet and rich for me (Lancome’s La Vie Est Belle) – but the gesture meant the world to me, so I started to wear it from time to time, especially on occasions when I went to visit my dad. It has grown on me a lot; I just have to spray it sparingly so it’s not overpowering. There are days when it feels comforting, like a warm hug. My mom’s last perfume was the eponymous Chloe — I still have her half-full bottle

My sister-in-law is a big perfume fan, and that gave me more opportunities to experience some new fragrances. Well, some new and some old. One old perfume, in particular, brought back a lot of memories. Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue was one of the scents of my 20s – as I’m sure it was for a lot of us Xennials who came of age in the late 90s and early 2000s. I hadn’t worn it in decades, but smelling it again at my sister-in-law’s house, I fell in love with it all over again. It’s about as different as it gets from By The Fireplace (the closest thing to a signature scent I’ve had in years) and evokes completely different sensory experiences, but in a good way. I hemmed and hawed over whether to buy myself a bottle, mostly because of the price. Perfume is so shockingly expensive these days! And I wasn’t sure if it was something that would ultimately bring enough joy into my life, considering it hadn’t been a part of it for years. What ultimately tipped the balance was something I found at the thrift store. Of course! It wouldn’t be an Adina story if thrifting didn’t come into it somehow.

Thrifting has been increasingly hit and miss lately. I’m going to write a separate post about that because I have a lot of thoughts. Truly special finds are getting more and more rare, but the thrift gods were smiling on me the day I ran into a ¾-full bottle of Acqua di Gioia perfume. The beautiful bottle, and a quick sniff, convinced me that $15 would be money well spent. I was not wrong. Though a classic, ADG is a perfume I’d never worn before, but I fell in love with it on the spot. Smell is a very personal experience — we all smell the same things, but they evoke different thoughts and feelings in us — but that being said, to me, ADG evokes a water nymph and also 90s minimalism. I love its freshness. As I was to find out later, it’s classified as an “aquatic” fragrance. It turns out that I love aquatic accords. (Think of accords as chords in music — several individual notes make up an accord, and several accords make up a perfume.) You know what’s also an aquatic? Light Blue. That made up my mind for me. It was time to bring it back.

Can you guess what happened next? I joined the fragrance community on Reddit to learn more about different types of notes and accords, and also to look up some of my other old favourite perfumes. What can I say? I’ve never been able to resist a rabbit hole. And perfumes are a TOTAL rabbit hole! But a somewhat dangerous one – there are so many scents out there, and so many of them sound appealing, there is a lot of temptation to want to try everything. After a few trips to Sephora and Shoppers Drug Mart, I quickly realized that I had to be careful when reading other people’s descriptions of their sensory experiences with scents; everyone’s nose is very different. I am very particular about the stuff I like, and there are many things I don’t like (read, a lot of the current most popular fragrances). I also have no interest in spending lots and lots of money on perfume (which is VERY easy to do!). What I decided I wanted to do was create a library of curated scents that boost my mood in different ways. And I’m looking to the past to inspire my choices because I want perfumes that hold memories and, thus, evoke strong emotions.

As you may imagine, aquatics are an important part of my library. Generally, they are considered spring/summer scents, but I enjoy wearing them whenever I want to feel uplifted and energized but in a, like, relaxed way not an over-caffeinated way. Smoky and woody scents are perfect for days when I want to feel cozy and/or a little mysterious. Gourmands are for special occasions or days when I want to feel a little bougie and ultra feminine. I am also a fan of “clean” scents – think white floral and citrus accords – but I have yet to add a permanent spot in my growing collection (I have a small sample of Lazy Sunday Morning but, while lovely, it’s not “the one”). Speaking of which, for the most part, I am focusing on bringing back some of the favourite perfumes of my youth. It has been something of a challenge, as many of them have been discontinued; finding “dupes” aka scents with a similar profile is very tricky because, as I noted, everyone experiences perfumes differently, so you can’t always trust that if someone says “this reminds me of that”, it will hold true for you as well. Still, reading perfume reviews on Fragrantica and Parfumo, with a view to planning future acquisitions, is currently one of my favourite pastimes. I have made so many notes! I have about 5 or 6 perfumes on my buy list currently, but I’m planning to go slowly and do a lot of research before committing to any big purchase. I might do a couple of cheapie blind buys though … the element of surprise has its attractions.

As for my current ritual? I love deciding every morning which perfume I will choose, much in the same way I love deciding which tea I will drink that day. (I’ve added a few more teas to my rotation too! They also smell divine.)  Or, I suppose, like deciding what outfit I’m going to wear. There is the act of choosing and the act of enjoying the choice, both of them pulling me into the moment and the sensual joy of the physical world.