LOVE NOTES: Scent edition đ
A Fragrance Wardrobe shaped by mood, weather, travel & memory
If Lips are voiceâŠ
Scent is presence.
For me, scent holds memory in its purest form.
There are so many moments in my life that I can trace back not by photographs - but by fragrance.
I think back to different chapters, different versions of myselfâŠ
My 16th birthday will forever be marked by Ralph Lauren - Ralph.
Youthful, bright, full of anticipation. ( I went to a ballet that night for the company I danced with and got food poisoning ⊠so notoriously, I also âralphedâ. Needless to say, I never wore Ralph again.
During my college years, working in a flower shop, I wore Burberry London - a scent that still carries the hum of those fun creative days surrounded by stems, petals, and possibility. Coincidentally, those were also the years I fell in love with London.
From there, I think about my time living in Dubai - a completely different energy, a different pace, a new version of myself I was just coming to know in my mid-twenties. That chapter smelled like Jean Paul Gaultier. A bit sexy⊠definitely more of a mysterious vibe. Warm nights, getting dressed up, stepping into the cityâs glow - it holds all the confidence and adventure of that season of life.
And Paris⊠there will always be Paris. I bought my souvenir bottle at the end of my time studying abroad at the Annick Goutal shop, and to this day I still visit the same shop when I return to Paris just to walk in and remember that feeling.
On my wedding day, it was Yves Saint Laurent - Cinema.
Bold, luminous, romantic â the fragrance equivalent of golden light.
And then⊠there were the babies.
The scents tied to those years are the most powerful of all.
There was the classic Johnson & Johnson purple bath wash,
Noodle & Boo shampoo filling the nursery airâŠ
But the sweetest, and the most tender, was the lotion I wore during the childbirth of my first baby.
The strongest sensory reminder of the baby I didnât get to bring home lives in the scent of Fresh - Nectar Milk.
They discontinued it years ago⊠but I keep the one bottle I have left. And when I open it, Iâm taken right back - to those quiet, sacred, somber but deeply beloved moments with Reese. Iâll forever be grateful to my sister who thought to buy this for me in the midst of my grief and shock.
Proof that scent doesnât just transport us to placesâŠ
Sometimes it carries us back to the people we hold in our hearts forever.
I should probably acknowledge something while Iâm here⊠I must have a good nose. Because without fail, almost daily, someone stops me to ask what fragrance Iâm wearing. It happens in carpool lines, at meetings, walking through a restaurant - even mid-hug.
âWhat is that perfume?â
âYou smell so good.â
âI need to know what youâre wearing.â
And it always makes me laugh a little, because scent has never felt accidental to me. Itâs intentional⊠atmospheric⊠chosen based on the mood Iâm in, the weather outside, or sometimes the feeling I want to step into that day.
Fragrance, for me, isnât just a finishing touch â itâs part of the emotional scenery.
It shifts with the setting.
With the season.
With where I am - or where I want to be.
Sometimes I choose a fragrance to match my moodâŠ
And sometimes I choose it to create one.
