Mini-Ep 386: What Do You Smell Like
Kate and Doree take a nose dive into listeners’ memories of their first and favorite perfumes.
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Transcript
Kate: Hello and welcome to Forever35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Kate Spencer.
Doree: And I'm Doree Shafrir.
Kate: And we are not experts.
Doree: We're not, we're two friends who like to talk a lot about serums,
Kate: And this is a mini episode where we hear from you, we share your comments and your thoughts, and we answer your questions to the best of our ability.
Doree: That is true, but our ability is necessarily limited because we are podcast hosts. We're not experts. We do encourage you to seek support first and foremost, from a medical and or me mental health professional as needed.
Kate: And this is a pretty lighthearted episode. You probably won't need to seek support elsewhere for the topics we talk about in this episode. Although, you know what? I never know. I shouldn't say that. I shouldn't make assumptions.
Doree: Never know.
Kate: Yeah, but the reason I say that is because this is the fragrance episode, but not just the fragrance episode.
Doree: Well, you texted me, Kate, and you were like, we're talking about fragrances. And I was like, Ooh, she's excited.
Kate: Iam you know, I love smells. And this kind of came up organically because I posted a few months ago on our Instagram asking people for their memories of the first fragrance they ever either had or connected with and what that memory was. And we got so many messages. It was really kind of moving actually. And it was interesting to see the connection between scent and memory,
Doree: Right.
Kate: And the way smells can evoke such intense memories even decades later. Now, you and I have talked about our first fragrances, and I know I can pinpoint mine as Debbie Gibson's electric Youth perfume, which I had to purchase with my own allowance money. I remember, and correct me if I'm wrong, don't remember the first fragrance, but you do remember your main high school fragrance?
Doree: No, I did not have a high school fragrance.
Kate: was It the college fragrance?
Doree: Yeah. Okay. I got into landcom's, Oui in college.
Kate: And did you go back and purchase this recently?
Doree: No, because it's been discontinued.
Kate: What is the scent that you went and purchased?
Doree: Oh kelka fleur.
Kate: Yes. Okay.
Doree: I never bought it in college because it was too expensive, but I bought it later. It was the scent I would smell on wealthy sorority girls. And I was like, why do they all smell so good?
Kate: And it was kelka fluer and it
Doree: Was kelka fluer,
Kate: And now you bought it. You're not the age of a sorority girl anymore, but you recently bought this.
Doree: I did recently buy it just to see does it still have a power? And it does smell nice. It is very strong, incredibly strong, which I think in some ways is good. I know that it's going to stay on, but boy does it stay on, and I have to be really careful about how much I put on, because otherwise I think it's just overwhelming, which now makes sense why I smelled it, because I would always smell it when these girls would come into the library where I had my work study job, and I would be behind the desk and I would smell them coming in, which
Kate: Wow.
Doree: It wasn't that far away from the turns style, but it wasn't like I was all up in their face. They were still like, right, right. A few right feet away from me,
Kate: But your nose wasn't on their necks.
Doree: No, But it was like wafting because it's very strong.
Kate: Wow. It's so interesting too. There's an aspirational quality to that one a little bit, maybe.
Doree: Of Course,
Kate: Right? Yes. The soro, I don't know. There's a bit of an upstairs, downstairs there.
Doree: It's true, Kate.
Kate: Well, I am, I'm texting one of my best friends from high school who is my polar opposite in terms of style, and she had a signature sent. She's like, she would be the fancy friend, and she had a signature sent that I will never forget, and I just texted her and asked her what it was. It's Jivago 24 carrot and it had little flakes of gold inside of it, and I have never seen anything fancier than this. I used to just call it gold schlager. That's what I would refer to.
Doree: Gold schlager.
Kate: Yeah.
Doree: Oh, that's good.
Kate: Bet. She says it's called Jivago. I've never even heard of Jivago.
Doree: Not like Dr. jivago
Kate: Maybe. I mean, I don't think it's his scent. It's spelled J I V A G O.
Doree: Oh, okay. No, it's not.
Kate: Well, Doree, we received all sorts of messages and I thought we could maybe just read a few. I tried to organize them a little bit by theme or by fragrance theme. So here's the first one. I just wanted to chime in and say that the first fragrance I remember wearing was peaches from the Body Shop purchased at the Burlington Mall. Shout out to Greater Boston, probably probably around 1997 to 1998. I do remember that we were all obsessed with vanilla fragrances as well. In college, I purchased my first designer fragrance of Happy from Clinique, and much like Kate's recollection of buying electric youth, I thought I was very fancy. My mom wasn't a big fragrance person, but on really special occasions, she would pull out a tub of Y S L Opium Fragranced cream.
Doree: Ooh, Okay.
Kate: I'm sure if I smelled old school opium today, it would woosh me back to the eighties.
Doree: Whoosh. Now that we're talking this out, I feel like it's definitely possible that I bought some gap scents in high school.
Kate: I mean,
Doree: what year did gap Sense come out?
Kate: Well, I want to dig into gap scents in the future on a future episode of this podcast. I think they came out in the mid nineties, 1990 says Day Gap was launched in 19 90, 1994. So you would've been in high school.
Doree: Ok that tracks, I would've been in high school. And as I recall, these took the world by storm
Kate: Grass. I remember Dream they came in. Cool. Little metal. Remember those kind of metal containers?
Doree: Yeah. I feel like I definitely had some gap scent, but
Kate: I think we, it's almost also if we didn't have a gap scent, we were surrounded by it.
Doree: Totally.
Kate: I think This is what's so interesting is like, yes, I definitely, I don't know if I ever owned a gap scent, but I had a f I remember just smelling that grass perfume all day long, every freaking day.
Doree: Yes, Yes, yes.
Kate: Okay, here's another signature sent from someone they wrote, I love this prompt. Fragrances are really important to me, and I can trace phases of my life by the sense I was devoted to at the time when I finish a perfume, I keep a little bit in the bottom and save the bottle so I can always access that scent memory. My first fragrance was over 20 years ago, and I still have the bottle. Growing up, girly, girly things were generally frowned upon. Hello, internalized misogyny and makeup was expressly forbidden. College was the first time I felt okay to start tentatively, tentatively exploring these feminine forbidden fruits, and my college best friend was instrumental in opening these doors for me. She took me to Ulta for the first time where I got my first manicure, bought my first makeup, and picked up my first signature scent. Amazing. By Bill blas.
Doree: Ooh. Okay.
Kate: Now that
Doree: I have no idea what that smells like, are you familiar with this fragrance?
Kate: Not only am I not familiar with it, but this sounds like something, I don't know, a first lady would've worn in like 1978.
Doree: Totally. Totally.
Kate: Like, Ooh, bill blast. Ooh.
Doree: Yeah, and it's funny, my first fragrance was over 20 years ago, and this, it's funny because this person has three exclamation points after this. Oh my God, this was so long ago. And meanwhile, I'm sitting here thinking about 30 years ago, but Bill Blass feels very eighties to me
Kate: Because he was very famous for dressing a lot of celebs in the,
Doree: didn't he dress like Nancy Reagan?
Kate: I think so. But also Cher, I feel like he's responsible for Cher wearing a very, that lacy skimpy dress.
Doree: Oh, interesting.
Kate: That was kind of a show. Or may, you know what? I might also, actually, it's possible I'm confusing Bob Mackey and Bill bla.
Doree: Oh, I think you're thinking of Bob Mackey.
Kate: I think I am too. Okay, so hold on. Bill bla, what a name. Okay. Bill bla blah, blah, blah. Okay.
Doree: Okay. His clients, many of whom are also his friends included, happy Rockefeller, Brooke Astor, Nancy Kissinger, Jesse Norman, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Patricia Buckley. So I mean, we're talking very social id
Kate: Gals of the sixties and seventies. Right. Happy Rockefeller. my Gal.
Doree: Yeah, he, let's see. Okay. So yeah, I think he really hit, he started out in the seven, early seventies with his eponymous line, but he worked for, okay, wait, hold on. Hold on a second. In 19, this is for, I'm reading from Wikipedia right now. So in 1970, after two decades of success in men's wear and women's wear, he bought Maurice Renner Limited, which he had joined in 1959 and renamed it Bill Blas Limited. Okay. So in the fifties and sixties, he was already a known fashion designer. He just didn't have his own line.
Kate: Got it. Got it. And presumably not his own scent.
Doree: I mean, I don't know.
Kate: I don't either. I would love to know what smells like.
Doree: His Wikipedia page does not have anything about his scent.
Kate: That's okay. Maybe this listener can follow up with some notes about what this scent smelled like.
Doree: Yeah. Please let us know. Please keep us posted.
Kate: Dor, do you want to take this message here,
Doree: Kat? I would love nothing more. Okay. Though not my very first scent, which is probably a drugstore Ode de twit. My mom slipped into my Christmas stocking. The first I remember choosing for myself were the Body Shop perfume oils from the early 1990s. In high school, I rotated between several scents. The Tea Rose was for feeling romantic or particularly feminine days. While Fuzzy Peach had a dry note that was a little more aggressive and as a quality I still look for in a scent. Strawberry was an infrequent choice too sweet, except it reminded me of a friend who wore it. So when she moved away, I'd put it on. When I missed her, white musk showed up occasionally and predicted my later favorite scent. Egyptian Musk purchased in vials at vintage stores or head shops. The last body shop oil I discovered was Woody Sandalwood, a spicy, darker, and more masculine scent that matched my late teen goth years and featured prominently in my pre clubbing grooming rituals. Recently I bought $40 worth of perfume sample decamps from the Perfumed Court, though it's been fun trying them out, it'll never match the sensation of a Friday night at the mall swinging by the body shop to try on the samples before finding my friends at the food court. Thanks for the memories, ladies.
Kate: As I've shared, I worked at The Body Shop all throughout high school, maybe into college. I can't quite remember. Yeah, I think into college. I worked there for three or four years on and off. And the circular round stand with all our perfume oils is like I could just, I can reach out and touch it. I could still feel it so deeply. Oh, those smells. Those are the other big smells of the nineties for me. Oh, the Body Shop.
Doree: The Body Shop. Yes.
Kate: Well, Doree, before we take a break.
Doree: Yes, Kate,
Kate: a friendly note that if you want to share anything with us, anything at all our voicemail,
Doree: Anything at all, anything at truly
Kate: Fragrance related or in a complete other direction, we accept all topics.
Doree: Yes.
Kate: Voicemail and text number (781) 591-0390. Our email is Forever35podcast@gmail.com.
Doree: And you can visit our website Forever35podcast.com for links to everything we mentioned on the show, follow us on Instagram @Forever35Podcast and join the Forever35 Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/forever35podcast. The password is serums. We do have a newsletter at forever35podcast.com/newsletter, and you can shop our favorite prods at shopmy.us/forever35. And now we're going to take a break.
Kate: Well, Doree, we are about to travel back in time or still stay where we are in time in the mid to early nineties to the time of CK one. Oh boy. Oh boy. Truly an iconic fragrance.
Doree: An iconic fragrance,
Kate: which I did own.
Doree: I mean, that was an iconic fragrance mostly because of their ads
Kate: And it, I'm sure it's not the first unisex fragrance, but in the way I understood scent, it was in my understanding of it. And I just remember that felt very revolutionary to me in the early nineties where totally, er was very much a binary or that's how we were taught.
Doree: I was like, where is she going with this? It was of the word not fluid. It was not fluid in the nineties. No.
Kate: And do you want to describe the ads for people? They were so sexy.
Doree: Yeah, but wasn't Kate Moss underage? I don't think she was 18 when those ads first came out. Was she?
Kate: I believe they came out in 1994 and Kate. Okay.
Doree: So Maybe she was 18, but she was at least she was very young.
Kate: Some of them are in bras and a lot of men are shirtless. I don't remember if Kate Moss is shirtless in these. She, they're black and white.
Doree: They were very sophisticated
Kate: And a bit androgynous.
Doree: Yes, yes, I agree.
Kate: Well, it rocked our world.
Doree: It did. It rocked. Rocked our adolescent world.
Kate: So here is what one person wrote. It was officially summer, just a few days after grade eight had ended, and we were officially going to be high schoolers. CK one had been out for a few years by this point, but none of us had either our own money or the kind of parents who were interested in buying their kids perfume. So when one of my friends managed to get her hands on a tiny tester tube of it, it was mind blowing. I remember we were walking to a boy's house, or we were going to hang out with a small handful of friends, guys and girls, no parents, as his cool older sister would be home. And my friend handed me the tiny tube and said, I could try a little, when I reflect on that walk, that smell and that hangout, it's like I'm on a moving walkway. The kind you find in airports passing through scenes of myself, triumphantly, embark on the journey into young adulthood. It's full of sensory emotions like bender's fist pump or the moment you hear, only you at the end of, can't hardly wait.
Doree: Oh my God.
Kate: The possibilities are endless and I can do this. And this listener wrote ps. I never would've thought that this would be the reason I finally wrote in, but I've been listening since day one. Thanks for all that you continue to do and that you try to be and do. Oh, look, we're happy that you finally had the moment.
Doree: You never know what it's going to be.
Kate: Yeah. You never know what's going to trigger the urge to tippity type on over to us,
Doree: But we're glad you did.
Kate: We are glad you did.
Doree: Okay, so another listener also wrote in about what we were talking about a few minutes ago, which the gap scent, and this listener wrote My scent at 14 was grass, because I guess I wanted to smell a freshly mowed meadow. I later graduated to Artist by the Gap when I became a more sophisticated 15 or 16 year old embarrassingly in late high school. My boyfriend and I thought we were made for each other because we both wore the incredibly obnoxious Abercrombie scent. I swear it was a formula created to mimic organ 19 hormones. I think it was.
Kate: What? Oh my God, I've never heard this.
Doree: Well, they say some. I thought there was a whole thing about how Abercrombie stores had pheromones pumped in
Kate: Yes. You're so right.
Doree: Oh,
Kate: You're so right.
Doree: I thought this was an actual thing. There was an article in 2014 and it said that they had, in their stores, they had their cologne called Fierce, and it was very masculine and strong, and they even sprayed it in the air conditioning system.
Kate: Oh my God. Well, and it's interesting to talk about Abercrombie right after CK one because also they would hire young, attractive teenagers, and a lot of the men who worked there would be shirtless at the front door.
Doree: Oh, totally. Yes. Did you watch the documentary?
Kate: I haven't watched it. Is it worth watching?
Doree: I don't know. I didn't watch it. I thought it watched it. I thought it might be too upsetting.
Kate: Yeah, they had shirtless greeters.
Doree: Yeah.
Kate: The just weirdly exploitative.
Doree: Yeah. Not a great scene.
Kate: Not a great look. But you know what? Those were different times and
Doree: Except that stuff went on for way longer than it should have.
Kate: Yes. So weird. When you reflect on things that were going on 30, 20 years ago where you're like, how did we all just not blink an eye at, do you just become,
Doree: Become a nerd to it? Yes. And that's why we have not even begun to confront all of the shit that we internalized.
Kate: Go on.
Doree: No, I mean, I feel like I talk about this all the time, that when, now that Gen Z has completely different attitudes than we do, because I feel like millennials, there was a lot of congruency, especially with older millennials.
Kate: Right. Because I'm technically, I fall right in the cusp. You kind of do. You're more Gen X than me, but yeah. Well,
Doree: Millennial, I mean, the earliest millennial supposedly is 1980,
Kate: So I eek into Gen X.
Doree: You barely eek into Gen X six months. But I do feel like there is this weird sort of five year period between 1976 and 81 that is not fully Gen X, but also not really millennial. Anyway, whatever. We don't have to talk about that point being Gen Z. There's been a total shift with Gen Z, and I think sometimes when people from our generation kind of see how they move through the world almost jarring because it's so foreign to us, and a lot of it is because of all this internalized misogyny and body dysmorphia and all this stuff that we just were bombarded with are most of our ad, most of our childhoods, adolescences, and adult lives. It's a lot of unlearning to do, and I think a lot of us are trying to, and some of us are not.
Kate: That's fair. That is a fair assessment. It can be very scary to unlearn.
Doree: It can be really scary, and I get that, and I try and I know that there's a lot of things that I still fuck up.
Kate: Same.
Doree: So
Kate: Well, before we take another break, I did want to share this one fragrance memory, because this was another fragrance I had and loved this person wrote, my first fragrance was De Gio. I was an eighth grade on a band trip to Hawaii, and a woman on the plane gave me $50. I thank you.
Doree: They said what?
Kate: Yeah, I know. I'm trying to That right there. We need way more info on this because also this is the mid nineties and someone handed you $50.
Doree: That was a lot of money.
Kate: That's a ton of money. I mean, still now, if someone gave me $50, I would be floored.
Doree: Yeah, totally.
Kate: They wrote
Doree: Fascinating.
Kate: They continue. I found this amazing scent in an outdoor market and blew the money on it. I was madly in love with the smell and wore bottle after bottle for years. I wish I could still buy it. Instant memory trip back to the mid nineties and smelled light, sweet and happiness. I loved dio.
Doree: I could not tell you what it smelled like.
Kate: I had it, which is why I can remember it. It's like a, it's light fruity scent, and I have no idea how I ended up owning that, but all I know is that I did.
Doree: Do you remember the Is Miyaki?
Kate: Oh my God, yes.
Doree: Cologne. Yes. That came in the triangular bottle.
Kate: Oh, yes. Yes, I do. That was also, that was a very green scent
Doree: Because I remember one of my good friends started wearing that in college, and I just thought it was the height and it was a man who was wearing it, and I just thought it was the height of sophistication.
Kate: Oh my gosh. Yes. Well, the smell is delicious, but also that bottle just is so classic.
Doree: Yes. The bottle was very cool.
Kate: Ugh.
Doree: I also remember Angel.
Kate: Yeah. Is that the one with kind of the jagged star bottle
Doree: Yes. Yes. It's blue.
Kate: Yes. Oh, yes.
Doree: Anyway. All right. We need to take a break. Let's take a break. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Kate: B r B.
Doree: All right. We are back With another email first, fragrance crowdsourcing. I love this and can't wait for the episode. I just turned 40 and have two memories. One, as a child, I remember staring awestruck at my mom's dark purple bottle of Dior poison. I would sneak into her room to look at the bottle, always too afraid to spritz it. My mom wasn't big on perfume slash makeup and prohibited my wearing it, so it was all the more fascinating that she had this magical vial of perfume two. As a young adult age, 17, at First Year University, I bought my first bottle of Perfume D&G Light Blue. I loved how fresh it smelled like summer and how it made me feel sophisticated and a bit unique because it wasn't as sweet as the perfumes everyone else was wearing. Fast forward to today, I'm all in on Tom Ford, NA Portofino or anything that smells like sun tanning on a beach in the Mediterranean. I feel like that's kind of your vibe, Kate with Bronze Goddess.
Kate: Yeah. This is my favorite kind of scent. It's not, palate is the wrong word, but profile. I love beachy. I think I lean more to the coconut vanilla realm. Oh my. Because there's kind of like a Jasmine other beach scent. I'm not a huge Tom Ford fan, but I love this because actually the last scent that my mom was wearing in her life was Dolche and Gabana Light blue. So I have this real kind of sensory emotional connection to that. I have a bottle of it. Oh God. I have a bottle just to smell to remind me of my mom, but anytime I smell it, It's just getting smacked in the face with my mom. I love it, and that's a nice scent. Dolche Gaana, a deeply problematic couple of people, and I wouldn't want to give them money myself right now, but I am still smelling a bottle that a friend gave me of that perfume.
Doree: Wow. Okay. Yeah,
Kate: That was a soapbox.
Doree: I loved it.
Kate: Okay, we're going to end Doree with, we have two memories from different people, and it's of the same scent. The first person wrote, this memory is so visceral for me. I am the youngest in my family with four older brothers. They are all very overprotective. My father is a super conservative, strict Catholic. My mother was just overwhelmed as a stay-at-home mom, trying to keep shit together and keeping everyone alive as a young 11 year old girl. I thought femininity was something that would never happen for me. On some random weekday that my dad happened to be in town, he traveled a lot for work. My mom sent him to the local cornet. Did I mention I also grew up in a small cow town, question mark dot four cotton balls. I don't know what a cornet is, but I'm imagining it's like a local Walmart.
Doree: Yeah. I don't know either.
Kate: She never sent him to the store, so this was astonishing. But my brother had been sick, and my guess is she was over it and desperate for help and something to plug up my brother's ears as his eardrum was exploding, he came home with two things Q-tips for my brother and Jean Nae for me. My mother was pissed and I was so glad everyone in the house was distracted by the mis purchase of the Q-Tips. Oh my God. So I could quietly explore my first chance at being feminine. My dad, oh, never had brought home random things for me before, so this will be a true treasured memory that sparked the notion that I could be all of who I had been in the past and something new in the future. Both things could be true. Still reading question mark. My husband just asked what I've been typing. I told him I was writing to my first podcast I've ever followed about my first fragrance memory. Oh, legit. He said, I don't remember the first thing I smelled.
Doree: That's really funny.
Kate: Oh, what a sweet memory. Like sweet and kind of strange.
Doree: Yeah, totally.
Kate: Your Dad did something out of character. You're remembering this kind of tense time, but it was like lightened by this unexpected gift that symbolized something for you.
Doree: Totally.
Kate: I'd have no idea what Jean or Jean, I
Doree: Think a Jeane
Kate: Jeane Nate that just is very, that comes in that yellow bottle. That's like a real kind classic drugstore scent. Revlon.
Doree: Yeah.
Kate: But what does it smell like? No idea.
Doree: Who could say
Kate: We don't know, but we love the memory.
Doree: All right. One last note. My dad's cousin, who I'd never even met, sent me a jeane fragrance bath set every year for Christmas for a years, every year, the same thing. Starting as a child, maybe age seven to eight until high school. I got this bath fragrance set and I had to try to thank you cards saying how much I liked it and appreciated it. Spoiler alert, I did not like it and never use it. I'd frequent UTIs and couldn't use any bath stuff, but I was not allowed to say this in my note. I just had to say thank you. So they kept sending it every year forever. Oh my God, this is so funny. I mean, I'm sorry you had UTIs all the time.
Kate: Of course, yes,
Doree: you can use it, but they were probably like, oh god, great score. She loves our yearly Jean Nate fragrance bath set. I'm also picturing that they had a room in their house that was just stacked floor to ceiling with these bath sets.
Kate: Oh my gosh.
Doree: Anytime they had to send out a gift, they were just like, put the bath set in the mail.
Kate: Oh my gosh. And that feeling of having to write a thank you note to a relative you've never even met,
Doree: who's sending you this kind of weird gift every year at the,
Kate: Starting at seven or eight,
Doree: Even if you did like it, how much of this could you possibly have been using? You know what I mean?
Kate: Right, right. How many baths are you taking?
Doree: How many baths with Jean Nate are you taking?
Kate: Oh my goodness.
Doree: Oh, what a time.
Kate: What a hoot. Wow. Oh, well, Doree, this trip down other people's memory lane has been really wonderful.
Doree: Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Thanks everyone for responding to Kate's call on Instagram and I'm inspired. I might want to go buy a new scent. I dunno.
Kate: I'm always down for new smells. Maybe we do a current scent.
Doree: You and I should go, you and I should really take a field trip with a scent bar sometime.
Kate: Yes, I would love that. And then we could get lunch after.
Doree: Yeah, let's do that. Okay.
Kate: Let's play on that date.
Doree: Okay, great. Okay. All right. Bye everybody.