2004-08-27T14:24:00.000-07:00

Smell is the basis for everything, and if you’ve read my work before then you know what a strongly held principle this is for me – really. Smell can link us back to the past in a flash, faster than any photograph or words can. Think about it: a word prompt, a person asking you about such and such a time would get a specific response that would most often be pretty generalized – the broad outlines. A smell, by contrast, will take you right back to a highly specific moment, and a smell connected to that moment works like hyperlink, immediately transporting you to that time so much so that you can recount what pefume you wore then, or the smell of your mother’s makeup when you used to play with it as a child, or a smell of a cologne that the ex you swore you had forgotten about, that you wished you could forget about, comes suddenly rushing back to you when you catch of whiff of his cologne as you ride the subway to work. So, with this as my essential foundation, then onward.

I think that no matter how poor you are, no matter how bad it is (unless you are without a home and have excessive bills to pay) – so essentially, if you are like me and fall in the middle somewhere, you are neither rich nor poor and fall squarely into the middle class bourgeois which means that you don’t have a great deal of disposable income (whatever that means) and that you have to count every dollar and cent. But here I want you to stop and think about that really dumb thing you bought or the make up that you didn’t need because all of your lipsticks are essentially the same color anyway – did you really need the Clinique version? No. You didn’t. But you do need perfume. You need it because it has the remarkable ability and power to transport you to an entirely different sphere, one in which you either flounder or swim with the best. You need the perfume that makes you feel great. It’s proven that smell, especially for women, is a make or break deal.

If a woman feels good about how she looks and smells, it is a proven fact that she will do better in both her personal life and her career. Ask yourself then, based on how your last meeting went or the last business trip you took without your favorite perfume – did you feel confident and secure? Did you feel attractive or dowdy? Would smell change that? I believe it would – provided it is a scent that you associate with positive thoughts and feelings, so if you have mixed feelings about your mother but love her perfume, every time you wear it you will be reminded of her in both good and bad ways. That is not what you want. You want a fragrance that is entirely of you.

Over the years I have changed how I smell, how I want to smell. For a long time I wore powdery soft perfumes, my friends would always tell me that I smelled like their grandmother. I wore old-fashioned fragrances, musky and soft, like cashmere. Then as I matured and changed, I didn’t feel soft and powdery any more; I felt strong, sensuous, sublime, and so I found a perfumer named Dawn and she created a fragrance made of over sixty essential oils and that I wear every day. She and I spent hours discussing what I wanted the smell to convey. I don’t think most people are this involved with smell – they find a perfume and like it and don’t think much about it or what I says about them. Or perhaps they do but I just haven’t met them yet – and I’d like to. This is what I told Dawn I wanted to smell like, what I wanted to evoke. This is our brainstorm.

The film the English Patient and the way Kristen Scott Thomas smells in it. The dryness of the sand, the sandstorms of red earth. A night flight to a far away country. Confidence. Sexiness, but subtlety. Honey colored hair and jasmine skin. Making love in the afternoon. Gin and tonics and laughter. Dance and flirtation. He and I in Morocco. Camel bells. Low tide.

These are just few of the things I said to her, but there was one thing that clinched the deal; I wanted a smell that would make me fall in love with myself. I wanted to radiate the confidence and gaiety of my father’s lovers, of Bond girls. I wanted something addictive, something that once you’ve smelled it, you just have to do it again. Why did I want this? I wanted this because I am tired or being the child in the backseat of her father’s car. That I am a grown woman, not just a patient. That even though I am serious, I am also light. It was a new fragrance for a new phase of my life, the one I am in now, in which I tango and wear powder. It is the scent of how I want to be remembered – and that I want no one else to smell like. That this is mine, that I must first learn to love myself before I can move forward. And when Dawn’s package arrived and I opened the cobalt blue bottle it was there. As soon as I smelled it my mind flipped a thousand images, a thousand smiles, laughs, pints in pubs, confidence and love, lust and attraction, mystery. This fragrance, which we have named “Habibi” which is Arabic and translates loosely as ‘honey’ is the subtle aura that I believe protects me. That, no matter what happens in my marriage or how cruel and catty people can be, it won’t matter because now I am in the front-seat of a sexy, fast car and I do not know where I’m going, but I know that I will enjoy the trip.

sotto voce | scent & sense