Lost fragrance

What has happened to the world today?  I think it is losing its fragrance.  When I was small, women left a wave of fragrance behind them.  At least my mother did, cloaking my childhood in perfume.  My first memory of her perfume, right after the war, was Friendship’s Garden.  I can still see the bottle and remember the fancy box it came in.  It had a curved top and wonderful illustrations outside.  The scent came with matching dusting powder.  What is dusting powder?  It’s like Johnson’s baby powder that you put on yourself after a bath but the scent matches your perfume, reinforcing it, so when you walk past a group of people they smell your fragrance.

When my mother walked past you, you knew she was around.  You inhaled her fragrance in the air.  She always smelled so good, first thing in the morning, last thing at night.  You see perfume has a way of clinging to your body, leaving its fragrance behind.  She had many perfume bottles on her dressing table.  Chanel No. 5.  Joy.  Fleurs de Rocaille, one of my favorites.  Remember that?  It was the perfume cited by Al Pacino in the movie Scent of a Woman, where he played a debonair blind man, when women still smelled of perfume and not of fabric softener or of nothing at all.

I inherited my mother’s love of perfume except where mother preferred romantic fragrances, I liked florals.  That was why Fleurs de Rocaille was one of my favorites.  I also liked Jasmine, Ecusson by Jean d’Albret, Casaque by Orlane when I was growing up.  They all had lemony floral scents.  Eau de Calandre by Paco Rabanne, Rive Gauche by Yves Saint Laurent.  I wonder now as I write this column how much the makers of the perfume had to do with the success of their perfumes.  Chanel was by Coco Chanel,  French lady.  When I was growing up French perfumes took the lead.  They enveloped you in a cloud of unforgettable fragrance.

Then, I don’t know what happened but wonderful floral fragrances began to fade from the shelves to be replaced by emotional names like Happy, or tea names like Green Tea, or fruit names like green apple, or color names like Blue and Pink, or brand names like just Gucci, or status names like Boss, or initials like CK for Calvin Klein.  I don’t know what else. 

I go to the supermarket to shop for some cosmetic things.  I usually wash my hair with gugo shampoo but I want to alternate that with something that I know makes my hair smell flowery.  I cannot find a shampoo that smells like flowers.  They all smell like fruit, or coconut oil, or bark, never of flowers.  So I know that I am fortunate no one in my life now wants to kiss my head because my hair smells of wood, not unpleasant, but certainly not fragrant, not the fragrance I long for, the scent of lily of the valley, or the scent of roses.

I buy some lotion for bathing in.  When I use it, I smell of fruit salad that contains coconuts.  It’s supposed to have shea butter, something that comes from an African tree, that is organic and earth friendly.   But I hate the smell of it.  It makes me smell of food.  Thank God it doesn’t linger.  Am I glad I am old and nobody’s around to kiss me and say, “You smell delicious, something between a fruit salad and guinataan.”

So what perfume do I have?  A single bottle with a scandalous rose on top of Lola by Marc Jacobs, introduced to me by my niece, purchased for me by a traveling friend, I have had it for years and it’s down to half a bottle.  You see, I hardly go out.  When I go out I now settle for light fragrances.  When I go out, I spray myself profusely with Eau de l”Ame or, translated, Soul Water.  I like the light fragrance and it is Korean.  It doesn’t stay on my skin.  I have the idea that I spray it on enjoying the fragrance and it disappears the minute I hit the front door.

Below it is an Evelyn & Crabtree fragrance called Somerset Meadow that I bought when I went to pick up something from nearby and that store was closed.  So I decided to sniff around and liked this.  It has Lily of the Valley, a scent I love.  This one I think stays a little longer.  I spray it on and by the time I get into the car, the fragrance is gone.

You know I can’t throw any of these things out.  My mother raised me to finish all the things I acquire.   So everyday I take a bath that makes me smell like a fruit salad at a picnic in the woods.  I spray on lightly scented colognes but I wonder what for because hardly any of the products available today at reasonable prices enfold you in a cloud of distracting wonderful fragrance.

What’s happening to the world?  It’s losing its fragrance, substituting I suspect the organic but not necessarily fragrant smell of earth and mud.

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