The Virgin Suicides. 1999. Paramount Pictures.
Smell is the sense most strongly linked to memory—which is why you never forget your first foray into the world of perfume. The fact that this usually happens during your teen years—a time defined by trying out a lot of things (some good, a lot questionable) in pursuit of appearing grown-up and attractive to other people—cements the magic of a first fragrance. Purely for nostalgic purposes, we rounded up the coming-of-age scents that will stay with us for life.
Tommy Girl by Tommy Hilfiger (1996)
The memory is still bright. The morning of my sixteenth birthday a pastel gift bag on the kitchen table: inside a chunky silver bracelet—the kind with a love heart lock and thick links that every girl wore back in the mid-00s—and a gleaming, metallic-capped bottle of Tommy Girl, my first real perfume. To be honest, I don’t remember if I had even smelt Tommy Girl before this: but the scent—the olfactory equivalent of butterflies in the stomach—was so potent from that first whiff I knew it would stay with me long after my sixteenth birthday.
Smelling Tommy Girl now as a late-twenty-something (with a preference for pungent citrus perfumes) it is still laced with the sunshine of youth, of being on the precipice of growing up, of being in that state where nothing has really happened to you yet but you are fizzy with the expectation of life and all that it might offer. I remember the night of that birthday as clear as I do yesterday. One of those perfect evenings of teenage girl-dom: my best friends and I dusting on layers of dark shadow on each others eyelids before dancing awkwardly and kissing strangers at a disco. I wore white pedal pushers and a matching white top, marbled with red and silver flowers, a light-hearted spritz of Tommy Girl glittering on my wrists. —Kathryn O’ Regan, Digital Editor
Be Delicious (2004) and Red Delicious (2006) by DKNY
Every middle school bad girl had it, and I wanted it. As a suburban 13-year-old there was nothing more sexy or sophisticated than Donna Karen’s apple-bottle scent, Be Delicious. The good girls were all wearing Princess (2006) by Vera Wang, but for my teenage soul, which was largely shaped by watching Sex and the City reruns at the houses of friends with ‘cool moms’, DKNY was the only option. The slightly suggestive name, paired with the biblical and Homeric connotations was exactly how I envisioned my personal brand at the time.
Much like the G-strings that poked out over the top of distressed Hollister mini skirts and the padded Victoria’s Secret push up bras that many of my classmates were wearing to school—only a little disturbing in hindsight—Be Delicious was not something my mother was ever going to let me wear. Ironically, by the time I was old enough to buy it myself, the appeal of smelling like an apple wore off. —Angela Waters, Senior Writer.
Glow (2002) by J.Lo and Fantasy (2005) by Britney Spears
It’s 2000 and something, I‘m texting my friends on a Motorola Razr, a phone I chose for its aesthetics, not its functionality. It flips, which is important. The 2000s—what a wasteland! A decade without a name, because I refuse to say the ‘Noughties’. The era sped up, the economy boomed, fast fashion broke luxury‘s temporality. I enjoyed the mind-numbing exercise of browsing endless rows of celebrity perfumes in my suburban chemist. I can hardly recall the ones I wore, there were so many, and I was faithless to all of them. Glow by J.Lo, I owned it. Britney Spears Fantasy, unfortunately, I owned that also. A plump pink bottle encrusted with diamantes. If high–shine lip gloss performed boredom and disinterest, the sickly sweet celebrity scents simulated the crash to come, the hangover. —Sanja Grozdanic, Editorial Intern
Euphoria (2005) by Calvin Klein
‘Glamorous. Sexy. Sensual’ was the promise that Calvin Klein whispered into my ear at the impressionable age of 16 as I traded in my birthday money for the seductive experience of Euphoria. I walked out of that store in a cloud of succulent persimmon and sensual anticipation, the last shred of guilt over the fact that my best friend had already claimed this as her signature scent melting away. Who needs friends when you have the world at your feet? Be that as it may, reminiscing at the ripe old age of 22 forces me to admit that the elated memories of my time with Euphoria have not lingered nearly as much as the sickly scent did the morning after a night out. The now not-so-provocative cloy of my old companion still loiters in the drawers of my closet back home—a nostalgic remnant of the golden era of angst that was my whirlwind youth. —Hannah Hummel, Editorial Intern
Poison (1985) by Dior
As a young immigrant kid who had just moved to North America, Poison represented a sort of grown-up glamour that I was dying to bring into my suburban life. While the stylish Lebanese girls at my school seemed to effortlessly pull it off, the scent was always a bit awkward and overpowering on me, so much so that my mother wouldn’t let me wear it in the house. —Marta Wilkosz, Creative Editor.