Marie (not her real name) is a 44-year-old history professor in Virginia, married, and a mom of two boys, aged nine and five. So far, she sounds like a lot of us.
Her perfume history sounds familiar, too. Her first perfume was a sample of Nina Ricci Nina she sent away for in a magazine when she was 10. As an adult, she dabbled in the 1980s “Holy Trinity” of Calvin Klein Eternity, Christian Dior Poison, and Giorgio.
Where Marie diverges from many perfumistas is in how she stores fragrance, and, more interesting, her awareness of why she enjoys perfume.
For storage, instead of shutting her perfume away in a cabinet, she keeps it out of light by heaping teddy bears on her bottles (see below). “I like teddy bears, and my sons give them to me.” (Her sons enjoy their own fragrances, Batman and Spiderman colognes. Batman is “quite nice — musky, earthy, and fresh. Spiderman is icy, watery.”)
But the main thing that impressed me was why fragrance fascinates Marie. “I think I love all perfume,” she says. “I can find the positive or evocative in any perfume and create a vivid image and backstory about it. However, would I wear them on me is another question.” An online perfume quiz pegged her for orientals, florientals, and chypres, and she does love just about any fragrance with rose — Estée Lauder Knowing is a favorite — but it seems to be the memories, dreams, and stories she attaches to perfume that provide their chief allure.
She says, “My collection of perfumes really are my equivalent to memories and photographs. I have a lot of perfumes that I have no intention of wearing again (Flowerbomb), some that I have bought because a friend or neighbor or colleague was wearing it (Ralph Lauren), some that I have even ‘hate bought’ like SJP Covet and Claude Montana's Claude Montana. (Although, I may like Claude Montana now after dusting it off for this article. To me it smells like cold gin. Not gin over ice, which can give it a diluted, watery smell. But gin poured out of a metal container in an air-conditioned room.)”
Here, in her own words, is an example of a perfume in her collection and its meaning to her:
Guerlain Champs-Elysées – The first time I went to France, I dropped my bags at the hotel and immediately went for a walk. I knew I had to buy the first perfume I saw and this was it. It was effervescent, bright, and pleasant enough. But it was rather boring, so I could have happily left it. Yet, it reminds me of the first time I went to Paris and the coffee shop where I had fizzy water on the side with my café and sandwich. By myself. All alone. In the ultimate city. Realizing a dream I’d had since I was 10 years old – to be in Paris.
And another:
Creed Jasmin Impératrice Eugénie – Very heady jasmine floral bomb. I feel I was too young when I wore it (26). I could have worn it a lot better now at 44. But I very recently realized that I always gravitated to this scent because it reminded me of Ciara that my mother wore while I was growing up.
One more:
Marilyn Miglin Pheromone – This is a green classic, a hallmark of 70s perfumery. I always associate it with living in my apartment in grad school in Chicago. I didn’t have a car, did not know how to navigate the metro, and would watch home shopping channels when I came home from class. I bought this from the TV on a blind buy and wore it a few days. I invited my now husband to dinner at my apartment and I remember thinking that this is the only perfume that does not interfere with the smells of the foods. So I wear this perfume when I am cooking and am reminded of good times at my apartment in Kenwood Street.
Talking with Marie made me look at my own perfume collection and think about how much of my attachment to each bottle is the smell of the perfume and how much is the stories and history each bottle has for me.
What about you? How much is your love of a scent connected to your stories surrounding it?
I love the idea of teddy bears!
I know! This is the first time I’ve heard of this solution to keeping the bottles out of light.
For me the perfume is ALL about the connection to people and places.
It does make it more special when you can connect a fragrance to something memorable. Music is that way, too. Never listen to a new artist when you’re going through a bad breakup….
Yes, that is the magic and power of fragrance for me.
Yet another dimension of fragrance.
Great article on a great collection! I LOVE peeking at others’ collections and getting the history behind the purchases and such.
I don’t connect every scent I own to a specific memory, but I’m finding more and more that it happens. Scent memory is a powerful thing!
Love your collection (and teddy bears) Marie!
I’m so nosey (pun unintended), I love talking to people about their collections, too!
I’m especially struck by Marie’s attitude to Champs-Elysées.
I think there is a lesson there for us all: not to expect perfection in every bottle. Many of us, perhaps, do treat our perfume journey as a search for the perfect partner, or the perfect lover. And if one has been disappointed in other aspects of life, that is understandable.
But perfumes, like people, have the flaws, or aspects that do not truly ‘fit’ our personalities – or our skins. That does not make them ‘bad’, but they can be a part of our personal story. We can love the bits we love and accept the bits we don’t. There will be pleasure in there somewhere.
I am going to give Champs-Elysées another sniff!
You have just taken perfume to the next level! I’ve often tossed off the comment that perfume is cheaper than therapy, but maybe perfume actually *can be* therapy.
well said!
I loved the Champs-Elysees story too – although I would probably never be that spontaneous, I just love the idea of going out into Paris and buying the first perfume I saw, so romantic.
With my luck, it would be Drakkar Noir or something like that.
ha!
Points to Marie for creative use of teddy bears!
I agree!
Agree, stories and emotions make perfume more meaningful in my life too. When I think of the 80s I remember big hair, fun times, and purple everywhere. Purple clothes (blame Prince) and purple smells in the air (blame Poison). Sometimes the clouds of perfume were so thick I could taste the Giorgio.
Paris and Champs-Elysées, how perfect! Thank you for sharing these treasures with us. It’s always a treat to see what’s hiding in the perfume cabinet and under the teddy bears. Would love to know what is in the square bottle next to My Burberry.
You are so right about all the purple!
Such creative use of teddy bears to protect the perfumes! And I loved the thoughts on the little boys’ colognes. Wow, Marilyn Miglin Pheromone: haven’t heard that in a long time, not since I wore it in the mid-80s! And speaking of invoking memories: I can literally see the bathroom in the apartment I shared with three other twenty-somethings in NYC in the years when I wore Pheromone (and kept it in the bathroom, shame on me). One of the things I love about perfume is that it triggers many associations for me: art, literature, memory, history, science. Gives me plenty to think about!
It’s crazy how a perfume can call up a whole era in a life. For me, Coco smells of the early 1990s. It was the first perfume I really felt was “my” perfume.
That ability of fragrance to evoke memories really is remarkable. I try to be careful these days NOT to wear a really beloved fragrance to sad occasions like funerals! I don’t want to create an association I may later want to avoid. What came after Coco for you?
Coco was my go-to for a number of years, then I slid into Shalimar briefly, then started poking around into the Carons.
I loved reading Marie’s take on perfume as part of a greater story. Scent memory is so powerful. Even if not marking a milestone of sorts, perfumes remind me of a point in time: like scents I discovered only last summer and wore in the evening while sitting out in the yard in my new apartment. Pretty mundane-sounding, but wearing them now brings me back to that serenity.
And teddy bears ????
I think these little pleasures are even greater, in some ways. A perfume that could evoke a summer evening in the yard is pretty wonderful!
Ok, I love these stories from the front lines. And the Teddy Bears? Beyond adorable. I was thinking, could I do this too? I see myself gluing the bears to a big box I could place over the vanity, which would be weird.
Everyone would demand to know what you could possibly be hiding under the teddy bear box!
“get your hands off the bear box, I see you!” no, not good
I also love reading about other people’s perfume collections. Mine are all out in the open on top of my dresser and bureau (nothing else but perfumes are on top of both pieces of furniture). Some of my perfumes are very old. The only perfume I owned that went bad very quickly was Donna Karan Gold. The rest (some of which are decades old) still smell great. Today I’m wearing CdG Amazing Green (chosen because I have on a green top).
That’s great that you chose your perfume based on the color of your clothing! The trouble would come when you wear black. There are so many fragrances with “black” or “noir” in their names.
Only a few of my bottles are associated with specific memories now, because I have so many, but I do remember back in the 80’s and 90’s the different phases I went through and the periods of my life I wore them in. Those are nice memories.
It’s kind of amazing how a particular bottle can sometimes call up memories of another time…..