What Decade — Or Century — Do You Smell Like?

A woman ran down the subway stairs past me, leaving a trail of Anais, Anais, the first fragrance created by French fashion house Cacharel.

Boom. It’s 1982. and I’m living in Paris and that’s the scent my then-beau gave me, an intense floral.

If a man trails Kouros, my knees weaken. The guy who gave me the Anais, Anais wore it. Sigh.

The night I met Jose, aka the sweetie, he wore a red silk Buddhist prayer shawl as a muffler. It was scented with his fragrance, 1881, a wonderful cologne created in 1955, “recommended for evening wear.” At the end of our first date, he took off this warm, scented silk and wrapped me up in in. Double sigh.

Eleven years later, here we are.

The cologne I love for summer was invented in 1902, Blenheim Bouquet, by English house Penhaligon. And O de Lancome, from 1969, with all the zingy bright-green optimism I recall from those years.

I often wonder what the world smelled like in 1933 or 1868 or 1743. Or 1572, as I’m currently reading a biography of Queen Elizabeth I.

Gunpowder. Leather. Sweaty horse. (Horse dung.) Coal. Fresh-cut hay. Unwashed skin. Cold, dry stone. Wool. Woodsmoke. Ordure. Blood. Freshly-cut lumber. Mud. Peat. Tallow. Tar. The ocean.

When Jose took me to Santa Fe, New Mexico, his home town, I learned several new smells: hinoki (cedar), used by the amazing local spa, Ten Thousand Waves. Sagebrush. Pinon. Chile powder.

One of my favorite smells in the world is that of sun-dried pine needles, a scent I associate with my happiest times, up north in Ontario at summer camp.

What will 2020 smell like? Or 2086?

Sniff! My Favorite Smells

Grasse, France, home to many delicious smells! Image via Wikipedia

As spring sunshine slowly warms the earth, you can smell the new season. Where I live, in  a small town north of New York City, the pungent and specific odor of fresh wild onion — their thin, bright green sprigs poking up everywhere — is one I look forward to every year.

One of my most powerful scent memories, decades old now, was driving through the North Carolina night down a winding rural road when a huge, delicious whiff of wild jasmine suddenly filled the car. Yum!

Some of my favorite smells:

Good leather

Clean dog

Warm horse

Old wool

Jet fuel (I’m going somewhere!)

Woodsmoke

Balkanie Sobranie pipe tobacco, lit or unlit

Lilacs

Hyacinth

Maja soap, a classic with the most elegant black tissue paper wrapping

Oilliet-Mignardise soap by Roger & Gallet, a spicy smell of carnations. Heaven in a box!

Tiempe Passate, a super-hard-to-find perfume made by New York perfumer Antonia Bellanca

Sun-dried pine needles

1881 cologne, the 1955 classic by Nino Cerruti, the one my sweetie wore the night we met 11 years ago

Cedar

The ocean

Moist earth

A well-made gin martini

Earl Grey tea, freshly steeped (yes, it’s the bergamot)

Grasse, in the south of France, has been a center of the perfume industry for many years and has a museum of scent.

Here’s a link to a Mallorca museum with some rural smells of the past.

What are some of your favorite smells?

Got Writer's Block? What If Every Word You Wrote Smelled Gorgeous? Try This Notebook

Image by indi.ca via Flickr

Every stroke of the pen releases scent from this French notebook, made by perfumers Le Labo.

As someone addicted to: writing, perfume, putting pen or pencil to paper, I love this idea.

If You Smell Great, Come Sit By Me! The Power Of Scent

Image by Stepheye via Flickr

If I had to choose between almost any other luxury and knowing there is a bottle of lovely perfume in my closet, scent would win. Today’s Financial Times’ magazine, whose nose-thumbingly grandiose name is “How To Spend It”, carries an interview with Serge Lutens, one of the world’s greatest “noses”, the men and women who create great perfumes. (The link, unfortunately, doesn’t include that interview for some reason.)

To those of us who spend our lives drafting behind people who smell really good on the street or subway (trying not to be scarily obvious about it, of course), Lutens is a little like Lance Armstrong or Tiger Woods. A legend; here’s an interview with him.

It’s well-known that scent can weaken our knees with specific memories. Whenever I catch a whiff of Kouros, a distinctive man’s cologne from the 1980s, there’s the oooh-la-la memory of Bill, one of the ex’es in my pantheon, who chased me down the Rue de Rivoli. My sweetie caught my attention as much with his wit, kindness and humor as his signature scent, Cerruti 1881. Yum.

Have you read Luca Turin? He explains perfume, how it’s created, why it affects us and how great scents are made. Here’s an interview with him and some helpful links. Scent-lovers thumb through his guide to perfume, eager to see if their beloved has won a nod or a sneer. Check out Sniffapalooza, the place where scent obsessives hang out.

On October 21, at Barney’s in Manhattan, four perfumers, American Antonia Bellanca (creator of hard-to-find Antonia’s Flowers and Tiempe Passate, which I wear), Ben Gorham, of Byredo Parfums, Frederic Malle (Editions de Parfums) and Fabrice Penot of Le Labo will speak on a panel chaired by Elle magazine EIC Roberta Meyers and beauty director Emily Dougherty.  Talk about your all-star team. Can’t wait!