Making Scents

I have always strongly associated perfumes with different eras in my life. When I think about it, in terms of perfume, my life can be roughly divided by decades with a perfume brand:

Love's Baby Soft (and isn't this ad from the same era rather disturbing? but this was back in the days when Brooke Shields was "pretty baby" and donning her Calvins, and Jody Foster was playing a teenage prostitute in Taxi so...)

Love's baby soft is so Jr. High for me. I had a lavendar turtle neck sweater (which I wore with my deep purple corduroy pants and my brown high heel clogs) and the inside of the neck of that sweater was sprayed with love's baby soft so that I could smell it all the time. I loved that stupid sweater.

L'Air Du Temps was roughly high school. I never really loved this perfume, I was just trying to be more mature. It had a strong floral scent. I ditched when I got to college (I never loved it much, and never particularly loved high school either so I figured it was bad karma to wear it in college).

I replaced it with Lutece. You can still buy Lutece though it's a bit tricky to track down. It's a bit more mature floral scent. It's softer. I still like it. My husband loves it because it's what I wore all the time when we were dating.

Into my 20s I paired this with Anais Anais, I wore them both intermitently. Anais Anais was the first really expensive perfume I ever owned. It's a floral too but it has a lot of very soft and subtle undertones. You can barely smell this on someone but it's very distinct. It has the slightest hint of spice but maybe just a touch of baby powder underneath. Very soft, but sophisticated. I wore it well on my way to 30.

Sometime after starting to have children my perfume consumption sank. It seems silly to put a lot of perfume on when you're just going to be changing diapers all day and running kids around. (though as I type this I am wondering if that wouldn't be a more practical use of the perfume). At some point I wanted my perfume to be more fun and I started buying Escada in my 30s. Escada does this weird thing where they slightly tinker with a scent every year (sorta like someone there is a little ADHD) it smells almost exactly the same as the year before, but not quite. I guess they think you will not get bored with it that way. So I started out loving Ibiza Hippy and then it was Rockin Rio and then it was Pacific Paradise and then it was Sunset Heat...you get the idea. It was suppose to make you feel like you were on a exotic vacation all the time and that really appealed to me (I'm highly suspectible to marketing ploys like this). When I sprayed it on I would imagine that Ibiza Hippy was the perfect scent for a free spirit like me. (nevermind that I've never been to Ibiza or that I don't qualify as a hippy in any way). Escada is floral, but it's fruity and fun.

So on to my 40s...time for a new perfume. I asked for this for mother's day:



The ad copy for Le Feu d' Orange reads:

A heady mix of blood orange, woods and fruit with a hint of cinnamon and vanilla.


This stuff smells delicous. And of course I like to imagine that it's a bit more serious than Escada - more appropriate for my 40s. I feel like a sophisticated internationally travelled woman with good luggage and chic though practical shoes.

Well...it's important to have a rich fantasy life anyway don't you think?