Scent of a Woman

It started with Love’s Baby Soft.

If you are of a certain age you remember it — that pale pink bottle, that powdery sweet cloud of a scent that was less a perfume than a promise. The promise of growing up. Of smelling like something other than your mother’s Ivory soap. I was twelve, maybe thirteen. I thought it was the most sophisticated thing I had ever smelled. I was wrong about that. But not about the feeling — the feeling that a scent could change something about who you were, or at least how you felt about yourself.

I have been chasing that feeling ever since.

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Paris at Fifteen

The first perfume that truly changed me was Anaïs Anaïs.

I was fifteen and in Paris for the first time — an Easter trip, London and Paris, the kind of trip that rewires you and lets you see and learn about a part of the world you have only known from books. Everything in Paris seemed simultaneously new and impossibly old and elegant. We walked in and out of perfume shops the way you walk in and out of churches in that city.

I left one of those shops floating on air. There is no other way to describe it. I was carrying a bottle of Anaïs Anaïs — that legendary bottle with its white flowers painted on the glass — and I felt like a more sophisticated version of my awkward high school self. Not a different person but a more sophisticated one, at least for that moment.

That is what a great fragrance does. It does not mask you. It reveals a little or a lot about you.

The Original Sephora

Every trip to Paris after that involved perfume. Not the Sephora we have now, the one at the mall with its rows of celebrity fragrances and weekend promotions. I mean the flagship store — the one on the Champs-Élysées, which was an entirely different experience. An education in scent and makeup. And beyond that, the smaller perfumers tucked into the side streets and the covered passages, the shops where you could find things that had never made it across the Atlantic and probably never would. I came home from every Paris trip with something that was mine and nobody else’s — a bottle that nobody at home would recognize, that I had found by wandering without an agenda and following my nose. That’s the best way to explore not only Paris but anywhere you travel.

One of those bottles was a lily of the valley perfume from a French perfumer whose name I cannot remember. It smelled exactly like the flowers on the side of my mother’s house in Wisconsin. I wore it until it was gone and went back for more and they no longer made it. The grief of a discontinued perfume, like lipstick is small and a little silly and completely real. I have never found its equal. I am still looking even after all these years.

Eau de Givenchy was another love from those years — light, fresh, unmistakably French, the kind of fragrance that does not announce itself but lingers in a room after you have left it. That is always what I have wanted from a scent. Not a statement. A whisper.

What I Know About Myself

I am a floral girl. I have always been a floral girl and I will always be a floral girl. No musk. No heavy woods. Nothing that smells like the bottom of a forest or the inside of a cigar box. Light florals, a thread of sweetness — the scent of a garden, not the forest floor.

I love the scent of lily of the valley. Of sugar and cotton and something that smells clean and soft and faintly of childhood without being childish.

This is useful information, actually. Knowing what you love — not what you are supposed to love or what the magazine said was sophisticated or what your friend wears — knowing your own nose is the beginning of everything when it comes to finding the right fragrance. It took me decades to trust mine. Now I do. And it turns out that for women over 50, this kind of self-knowledge is the key to life, not just perfume. Not age-appropriate perfume. Not a signature scent chosen because someone else said it was the right one. Your scent. The one that smells like you on a good day.

From My Own Shelf

This is a selection of what is actually on my bathroom counter right now.

Three of them are from the Maison Margiela REPLICA line, which I want to say something about before I name them. The idea behind REPLICA is that each fragrance is built around a specific memory — a place, a moment, something you could close your eyes and return to.

Lazy Sunday Morning smells like clean linen and lily of the valley and the particular kind of morning when there is nowhere you need to be.

Flower Market smells like a flower market. Exactly that. If you have been to the flower markets in Paris you will recognize it immediately. It has been discontinued, unfortunately but you can still find it if you look.

Springtime in a Park is all lily of the valley, which you will not be surprised to hear is my favorite thing. It is holding the space on my counter while I keep looking for the one that replaces my long-discontinued Paris bottle.

L’Eau d’Issey by Issey Miyake, which I have worn for years. It is light and clean and takes me back to Paris every time I wear it because that it where I first found it.

Lollia Believe — subtitled Cabbage Rose and Citrus, which is exactly what it smells like. Rose and apple, and a little citrus I reach for it on ordinary days because it makes them feel like something special.

By Rosie Jane Leila Lou, which is pear and jasmine and fresh cut grass, made by a woman in California who named it after her daughter. Clean and a little sweet and completely unpretentious.

Library of Flowers Root, which I will admit is outside my usual floral territory. It is green and earthy and mossy, more forest floor than garden, and I do not entirely understand why I like it as much as I do. But I do. Sometimes a fragrance surprises you.

And Lollia Breathe — peony and white lily, clean and soft and barely there. This one is a whisper.

Here is the thing I want you to take from this list: there is not a single bottle on my counter that cost the same amount as any other. I do not discriminate by price. I have worn a twelve dollar bottle from TJ Maxx that smells like sugar just as happily as a three hundred dollar French fragrance. Your nose does not know what you paid. Trust it anyway.

A Few Florals Worth Finding

If you are looking for something new here is where I would point you, depending on what you are looking for.

If you want something light and pretty for everyday wear, start with Tocca’s Florence — lily of the valley, rose, a little sandalwood. It is soft and feminine.

For something with a little more presence, try Chloé Eau de Parfum. It is a rose fragrance, soft and powdery. Not heavy. Just there.

Jo Malone is the line I use when I want to layer. Peony & Blush Suede is the one I keep coming back to — rosy and soft and a little velvety. But the real beauty of Jo Malone is combining two scents and ending up with something that is entirely your own.

And because you will see it everywhere: Coco Mademoiselle by Chanel. It is more intense than I reach for personally. If that is what you are looking for it is perfect. I just happen to prefer a whisper.

The right fragrance is not the one with the best reviews or the prettiest bottle. It is the one that smells like you on a good day and the one that makes you feel special, takes you back to a place or a memory.

The Destination

On a future Paris trip, I want to have a signature scent made just for me. Not chosen from a shelf. Not spritzed from a tester. Created. By a perfumer, in a consultation, with my name on the bottle when it is done.

Right now I am in research mode, looking into the ateliers and independent perfumers in Paris who do this kind of bespoke work.

In the meantime I will keep exploring, keep trying new scents, keep following my nose through the side streets of everything I love.

Find Yours

That fifteen year old girl floating out of a Paris perfume shop with her Anaïs Anaïs had the right instinct. Scent is personal. Scent is memory. Scent is the invisible thing you leave in a room when you have gone that makes people turn and wonder, just for a moment, who was here.

Do you have a signature scent? Or are you, like me, still on the beautiful journey of finding it? Tell me in the comments — I genuinely want to know.

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You might also enjoy:

The Flowers That Take You Home — Lilacs, Lily of the Valley and Spring Nostalgia

You Have Earned This: A Permission Slip for Women Over 50

Dear Woman Who Has Been Last on Her Own List

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