I was in a fancy interiors shop here in Hastings last week when a woman came in smelling exactly like my friend Kitty. ‘Are you wearing Pomegranate Noir [Jo Malone]? I love that smell,’ I said. When she had recovered from a stranger commenting on her scent she was v pleased. ‘You’ve made my day!’
Linking a scent so strongly to someone made me think of the perfumes that I’ve associated with people over the years.
Mum
I’m in bed in our house in Warwick Avenue (South Harrow) and you’ve come to say goodnight. Usually you read to me {at bedtime but tonight you’re going out with Dad. A rare thing. You’re wearing your beige leather jacket with fake fur trim and lots of makeup. As you lean to kiss me I smell your lipstick and also the Aqua Manda that my sisters and I ‘bought’ you for Christmas, the one in the little brown bottle with the patterned lid. Many years from now, I will be transported back here when I smell a powdery new aftershave by Prada for the first time.
Tracy
Saturday night and we are both off our faces on speed as we barrel along the Westway to Delirium at The Astoria. The car smells of my cigarette smoke and the generous spritzes of Giorgio Beverly Hills that you gave yourself before we left.
Wendy
You regularly returned home from the pub with a black line on your upper lip from all the Pernod and black you drank. We were all amused, and slightly horrified, at your tales of rugby tackling men in the pub or taking them outside fireman’s-lift style. The smell of Poison will always remind me of teenage you.
Mark
You slapped me with wet towels and told me how much better in bed your random shags were than me. Even now the smell of Eau Sauvage, which you often wore, makes me feel uncomfortable.
Pauline
A native Parisian, you’re suitably chic – and you designed for Gaultier in the 80s! You’ve chosen the name Pauline (which we pronounce Pol-een) because, to you, it sounds exotic, though I later learn you were born Dominique. The first time I smell Angel is when you float into the magazine studio having just discovered it. ‘Me encanta!’ [I love it!] you tell us. So do we.
David
You don’t have a signature scent because aftershaves bring you out in a rash. I hope the over-excited shop assistant in John Lewis who tried to spritz you as you walked past has recovered from being shouted at.
Me
A Boots token. Five pounds to spend on whatever I like. I buy a bottle of Mandate, because I want to smell like Sasha Distel. It’s sophisticated, long-lasting and very sexy, he tells me in the advert.
‘Is that a boy or a girl?’ asks one of the two ‘square’ 12 or 13 year olds next to me at the crossing on Oxford Street. I’m off to Miss Selfridge to buy some new makeup. I pretend not to hear but I’m thrilled. I toss my backcombed hair as I cross the road, leaving a trail of Body Shop’s sickly sweet strawberry perfume in my wake.
Davidoff’s Blue Water, Clarins’ Eau Dynamisante and Paloma Picasso’s Minotaur accompanied me through a lengthy mental breakdown in Barcelona in the early 1990s. They all smell of fear, disassociation and misery to me.
CHRISTMAS OFFER
Are you looking for the perfect stocking filler for your mum, your dad, your partner, your sister, your dog, yourself? Then might I interest you in Short Stories About Mothers & Fathers? This latest collection (my fifth) features pieces by Matthew Fort (writer and judge of Great British Menu), Jessica Fellowes (The Mitford Murders), Sophie Radice (The Henry Experiment), me, and others.
You can find it here on etsy (for £6.50) or send me a DM to get it for just £5 including P&P.
I have my mother's empty perfume bottles in a draw - they smell exactly the same now as they did 50 years ago.
c.1980 my brother had a girlfriend called Alison, when he was about 15. To this day I can still vividly recall her perfume as it lingered in the air outside my bedroom door. I wish I knew the name of the scent, but perhaps it adds to its nostalgia by being a mystery.