Seasons of Scent
“You smell like the eighties”, my daughter invoked when she hugged me recently. She was right – I was wearing an old 1980’s favorite, Coco by Chanel. It was a fragrance that I chose for myself when I was pregnant in 1985. It had just hit the perfume counter at my local department store and I was immediately drawn to the sleek black-lacquered bottle as much as the scent itself which was unusually complex and lush. Being a very cold fall season that year, the perfume was thick with warmth and comfort. And it was enough to make 8 month pregnant me feel both alluring and chic again.
A few years ago my editor asked me to write a piece on the small towns in my state and the perfumes that a woman from those communities might wear. It was a fun article to research and coming up with the accompanying scents was not hard. Afterall it was summer with plenty of bright sunshine and blooming flowers. I knew my job was to present the newest offerings from the perfume world and romanticize them to fit the various New England seaside hamlets and villages that surrounded me.
Somehow I found Coco again this fall. It hasn’t been particularly chilly but I’ve been feeling cold and closed-off. Someone has been missing from my life because of a serious illness and I miss him a lot. Oh I have visited but he’s not here and that has left a hole in my fall. Reaching for my old favorite has been reassuring and consoling as I await his recovery and return.
It could be that my daughter was responding to a scent imprint from when she was still in the womb but I think it’s more likely I occasionally wore the perfume the winter after she was born. I now have only happy associations when I spray my neck and wrists each morning. It is not unlike wearing a soothing and soft shawl across my shoulders. And it makes me realize that there are fragrances that evoke precious places and seasons and like certain locales, may deserve to have a scent of their own.
7 Comments
Margaret Powling
I have never tried Coco, might do so. But I wonder whether it smells exactly the same as it did when first produced? So many now don’t smell anything like their original selves. I take the latest Miss Dior as an example. This used to be a wonderful sophisticated fragrance (I first had this in 1956!) and now it’s nothing like the scent I recall, it’s so sweet and sugary, like so many modern fragrances which have been designed for the 21st century young woman. I simply do not like sweet perfumes, I find all those fragrances that smell of fruit or vanilla truly awful. I long for the fragrances to be as distinctive as they were in the 1950s and 1960s. You simply couldn’t mistake Chanel No 5 for Miss Dior in those days, nor Opium in the 1980s for Rive Gauche.
LA CONTESSA
I do NOT have a special scent and I keep searching!!!!!!!!
Amy
Funny, the only scent I’ve been wearing this fall is Coco EDT, plus the lotion and bath gel, despite a friend once telling me that Coco is not a perfume for blondes. I’ll switch to Allure after Thanksgiving – that warm vanilla is just winter for me.
A Lovely Inconsequence
I am a blond and love it Amy!
Karen
As you know, I have only two scents–and they’re both Chanel No 5–but for years, I wore Lauren–can’t wear it now, as it’s the scent of my marriage–now ended. Scent does reflect the seasons of life–and my happy life now strolls and dances in a cloud of No. 5!! Thanks for a lovely post!!
Bev Compton
I receive black and white words and had to click a link at the bottom of the page to reach colorfully illustrated photos and other blogs I never have seen. How might I come to this directly?
A Lovely Inconsequence
Hi Bev, Thank you for your readership. The web address for my blog is now alovelyinconsequence.com That should take you directly here. You might want to subscribe and when there is a new post, you will receive it in your email inbox. The subscription block is at the top right of the page. Thank you again!