The Signature Scent

Like many girls, I grew up in a family where the women each had a "signature scent". Every Christmas my mother would open a bottle of Estee Lauder's "Beautiful" with a rapturous smile, then allow each of us girls a tiny spritz.

It might as well have been liquid gold; Mum made it very clear that her perfume was not something for children. We would bob around her like corks as she readied herself for a night out, waiting for the moment when she would uncap the glass bottle and spray it on her neck, her wrists, her collarbone. The stray particles of perfume would inevitably drift down and settle on us where we stood in ponytails and pyjamas; it made us feel very grown-up.

My father fed our addiction with tiny rows of sample bottles from airport stopovers, which we inevitably either lost, broke, or saved for so long that the perfume inside went a bit whiffy. I used CK One for a good while in high school, mostly because it was given to me by my first boyfriend. I don't think I used anything at all in college except for a tiny vial of The Body Shop's "White Musk", and that only because I had it lying around. Like many of the utterly fascinating things that get left behind in childhood, my interest in perfume just evaporated.

Then my sister Olive (the younger but more "together" sibling) decided to find "her" scent. She trawled Sephora, boyfriend in tow, finally emerging triumphantly with Ralph Lauren's "Romance". In a moment of total lunacy, she told me of her find.

And I promptly stole her perfume.

I have since learned that this is something of a cardinal sin amongst sisters. Clothes, shoes, hair product -- all of these things were mere annoyances when compared to filching Olive's perfume. She is kinder than I am, and did not kill me; as luck would have it I was anticipating a move to the UK, and so we created a vey handy rule. I am allowed to wear "Romance" as long as I am inhabiting another continent. When we are on the same continent? The scent is Olive's alone.

"This is all very nice," you might say. "But what does it have to do with Scentsibility?"

Well. After four delightful years in the UK, I am now looking at moving back to the US. In fact, I'm looking at moving back to the same city as Olive. While neither of us is as territorial about "Romance" anymore, I thought it might be nice to find my own scent, or better yet series of scents. And after a brief whirl through the various blogs, reviews and articles on the internet, I realised that I will never, ever be able to be one of those very accurate reviewers who comments on notes and drydowns and compares to the Great Perfumes. I don't have the best nose on a good day. And while I love the word "patchouli", I have no idea what it smells like (...yet).

Scentsibility is just a simple blog of my thoughts and reactions to various samples that I scrounge as I go through London. I'm trying to focus on some of the more European fragrances, partially because I'd like to stand out a bit when I get back to the US. I'm sure I'll mix in some more well-known brands and houses along the way.

As always, the same fragrance smells wildly different on different people, so do NOT rush out and buy a bottle just because I say it's lovely. Body chemistry goes a long, long way -- my colleague Canadianne will be doing a Scentsibility cameo every once in a while, and we're always surprised how some fragrances I find absolutely wretched suddenly transform into something mystical and sexy on her.

Anyhow, I hope you enjoy following along. If you'd like more professional insights, there are plenty of really top-notch blogs out there which will be able to tell you all sorts of wonderful technical details. I admire them tremendously.