...on one of my favorite perfume-related blogs. Oh, my. How evocative, how captivating this topic is for me. And I have so much to say about it... and I thought you'd all like to share.
Now Smell This featured a post on one's earliest fragrances, and the memories associated with them. It invites readers to write about their own earliest experiences with perfume. Me, I remember several episodes... the pretty scent my Grandma Rose wore, which was almost certainly by Avon, and the very pretty folk bug repellent Skin-So-Soft she swore by. Grandma Red let me play with a little scent bottle that once held something sweet and powdery-smelling, which was empty in my childhood... I filled it with water and wore the faintly scented water over and over and can still smell the fragrance in the empty bottle now that I have inherited it. The neighbor girl, Katrina, had a "perfume factory" play kit of some kind with various fragrance notes and small funnels and droppers... we created what we thought were very rare, costly, and unique scents that were naturally rather well circumscribed by the creators of the kit. I think it was probably Avon, too, looking back; her mom sold Avon products. My mom and I discovered Love's Vanilla together and were devastated when it was discontinued. It seemed to us to be quite the perfect single-note vanilla scent, and we wanted more. Mom's Babe, which her chemistry made just divine: spicy, etherial, and fresh all at once. My mom's racy best friend Betsy's Youth Dew and Estee Lauder and other powdery sweet nectars. Auntie Avanell's boudoir dresser, bejewelled with numerous glorious bottles of middle-cost-to-first-rate perfumes: she wore L'Air du Temps and it was heavenly. The sweet peas, Cecil Brunner mini-roses, irises, and orange blossoms in Grandma Red's yard; the oh-so-edible honeysuckle in my playmate Jeffy's side yard.
Nice memories of my grandfathers by their scents and the feel of their whole-body-envelopingly-huge hands (hey, both passed on before I was 2 1/2). Smoke, iron, sweat, rain, pipe tobacco, musk, leather, tomato leaves, man.
And other scented memories. The time my dad left bait squid in a raincoat pocket tucked into an inaccessible cupboard of the camper for ...I remember this as 2 weeks, but it can't have been. The stink of a skunk that let go in Sharon's back yard-- her much older, glamorous, never-deigned-to-utter-a-word-to-me-before sister Trina came out and said with a wink, "If you open your mouth, you can taste it."
What was the first perfume you wore, and why did you wear it? Or what smells come to mind when you think about scent and early memories?
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1 comment:
Wild Country. Because Gran'ma had it and I like the way it smelled. I was five.
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