“C” is for Cologne
I recall vividly from a very young age being mesmerised, nay, obsessed with my mother’s bohemian crystal perfume atomiser that sat on her dresser with dozens of other crystal trinkets and treasures. The bottle had a tiny ring of dried perfume at its very base and the atomiser tassels were frayed but I loved it and I so wished that she would refill it but alas she revealed it was broken, so it now simply held a prime place on her dresser for ornamental value only. She herself wore Estee Lauder’s Youth Dew, and still does. It is a scent that I consider to be distinctly my mother’s and I feel very homesick if I ever catch a whiff of it walking through this city that I now call home.
I think I “acquired” my first perfume at the age of 8. At least I’m pretty sure I was 8 because I remember its careful placement on my dresser, and the layout of the room I had when I was about that age. I say “acquired” because this wasn’t bought specifically for me, it was a tiny used bottle of 4711 Cologne that my father must have picked up from somewhere. He didn’t wear it himself, he was an Old Spice man from way back. I don’t know if I particularly loved the cologne, but it was mine, and it was a “grown-up” fragrance, which meant it far outranked the watery, sugary scents designed for little girls that I may have received in a Barbie box, or something of that ilk.
I went to boarding school so, as teenagers we were never permitted to have paying jobs during semester, and holiday jobs were hard to come by. However, we were permitted to go into the city on a Saturday or Sunday for a few hours, where I was inevitably drawn to the fragrance counters. Having no income I never bought a single bottle of perfume…but I had quite the collection of samples.
It always struck me that my mother and sisters always had “signature” perfumes. One perfume that they wore year after year, switching only if the ultimate disaster happened – i.e. the fragrance was discontinued. However, I chose fragrance very much based on my mood for the day, or the weather, or the time of day, or activities to be undertaken, or colour of my clothes…you get the idea. As I got older I still could not seem to satiate my desire to smell (and use) more and more fragrances. I could afford to buy them now, but until recently I always felt a bit guilty, that is was perhaps a little decadent and wasteful.
Skip forward to the current decade and I am delighted to have discovered fragrance having its own substantial following online. I have for the longest time now, been lurking around the #fragcomm reading blogs, and exploring YouTube, and I have finally realised: it’s not just me. Modern technology has now joyfully encouraged and enabled me to just “buy the damn perfume!”.