Thing Number Twenty-Nine | Smell

My first scent was Colors de Benetton, which was the scent every “cool” girl was wearing when I was in high school (every cool boy was wearing Drakkar Noir and if I catch a whiff of that, I’m immediately transported back to a variety of high school dates and dances). Luckily, I actually loved the way C de B smells.

Now I wear Chanel No 5 parfum almost exclusively. It’s the only perfume I’ve found that doesn’t give me a headache. Plus, it reminds me of my mom. I don’t think she ever wore perfume during my childhood, preferring soap and hand lotion for her scents, but in the bottom drawer of her dresser was a tiny bottle of Chanel No 5 parfum in the iconic white box with black trim and there was the teensiest little bit in the bottom of the bottle. When I was a kid, every so often I would open the drawer, pull out the box, slide off the top, gingerly remove the stopper from the bottle, and breathe in. That’s all, just take a breath. Then I would restopper the bottle, put the top back on the box, put the box away, and close the drawer. Something about the box and the bottle and the fact that it was kept tucked away was all that was glamorous and expensive. Chanel No 5 parfum came to represent womanhood and all the good things that came with it to me. When I was in high school, Mom would let me put the tiniest dab of Chanel No 5 on my wrists before very special events, like the prom or when I was on the homecoming court. I also wore Mom’s Chanel No 5 on my wedding day.

My parents gave me a bottle of Chanel No 5 parfum for my 30^th birthday (it’s still achingly expensive) and I put a dab behind my ears and at the base of my throat on special occasions. Like my mom, I’ve found that I prefer the smell of soap (I like Soft Soap on my hands and any of the clean, citrus Bath & BodyWorks scents on my body) and hand lotion (Philosophy Inner Grace) for my daily scents. I especially can’t stand to have any kind of intrusive smell near my hands because it affects the way I smell food when I’m eating.

Jon wears cologne fairly regularly. When we met, I think he was wearing Ralph Lauren’s Polo but that’s never been one of my favorite scents so I switched him pretty quickly to Abercrombie & Fitch’s Woods which is my all-time favorite guy scent. Sadly, it was discontinued. A & F produce a similar scent but it doesn’t smell quite the same and I hate the company’s branding so I’m ok with Jon wearing something else. But I was so sad when he used up the last of it. We’ve looked for a similar scent and the closest we’ve found is Cordovan by Banana Republic. It’s not the same but it’s similar and I love the way it smells on him.

But the best smell of all on my husband is deodorant (Right Guard Fresh), soap (Ivory Sensitive Skin), and sun. I love the way he smells when he walks in from having been doing something outside. It’s the best smell in the world to me.