Mini Treat: You should wear your old scent

Sometimes you gotta lean into the overwhelming heartache of nostalgia

We've all been assaulted by our sense of smell before. You know, when you're walking down the street and a familiar scent hits you with an intense wave of nostalgia, instantly transporting you to a different chapter of your life. It’s undeniably tender…but also sort of weirdly horrible at the same time.

If you can smell these photos it's possibly time for a retinoid

I'm a deeply sentimental person by nature, but I wanna be clear: the idea of actually going back in time would be a form of severe punishment. Having said that, I can't help but feel an uncontrollable, overwhelming heartache when I reminisce about past versions of myself and my life. The other day, I sniffed a candle that reminded me of the air freshener my high school best friend always had in her car. The nostalgia was so overwhelming, I almost fell to my knees right then and there. But she’s still my best friend! And she still owns that car! Why was I so nearly brought to tears?

A sniff of these shampoos in 2024 would, in fact, end me.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve also been working on a project that involves a beauty product that has this curiously nostalgic scent; it’s reminiscent of something I used to have or use when I was very little, but I just can’t quite place it (an old shampoo? one of my sister’s lipglosses I used to steal? It’s honestly unclear.) But being so immersed in this project, I’ve been thinking a lot about my own relationship to scent and nostalgia. But more importantly, how even though it actually physically hurts my heart sometimes… I do actually enjoy feeling that fuzzy, confusing sensation when I sniff something that transports me back to my past. And moreover, I realized it’s weirdly a feeling I want to experience more often.

A strange little fact about me: whenever I’m really early to Heathrow (which I always am, because I have insane travel anxiety), I kill some time by sniffing perfumes in their fragrance hall. Sometimes I’ll buy a little travel sized scent to bring on my trip (making more scent memories! ), but other times I’ll just smell a bunch of random Maison Margiela Replica perfumes and then board my flight. Anyway, the last time I was at Heathrow, I felt randomly compelled to smell the Chloé eau de parfum my mom gifted me for my seventeenth birthday, which I used to wear obsessively as a teenager. And jeeeeeeeez louise, that hit me like a ton of bricks—I was instantly back in my teenage bedroom, making zines on the floor, listening to concerningly sad music, and dousing myself in this perfume to try and get rid of the smell of cigarette smoke off my clothing so I wouldn’t get in trouble.

If you've never given it a whiff, Chloé has a powdery, floral scent reminiscent of fresh laundry. One of its base notes is honey, so it doesn't smell powdery in an old lady way at all. Instead, it has a sweet kick to it, which made it especially appealing to many teenagers in the early 2010’s. Even though the scent profile itself doesn’t necessarily align with the kinds of perfumes I gravitate towards these days (I like more greeny, earthy, floral scents), the journey a single spray took me on was so overwhelming, I decided I simply couldn’t leave without taking a bottle with me.

Since then, I’ve actually been wearing the Chloé constantly. Not when I’m doing a date night with Dom or if I’m having a night out with pals, but more when I’m nesting at home, or when I’m feeling particularly homesick. There’s something about being able to smell this childhood perfume on my skin all day long that is so deeply comforting—it almost gives a similar sensation to cuddling with a childhood toy. It’s like being wrapped in a familiar blanket, gently reminding me of my past, while also providing a sense of continuity and warmth as I move about my life in the present day.

I shared with my friend how much I've been enjoying wearing my old teenage fragrance, and it inspired her to revisit her go-to scent from those days, “Daisy” by Marc Jacobs. Since then, we've been talking non-stop about how wearing these nostalgic scents makes us feel so grounded and connected to our younger selves. You know how a therapist might suggest looking at childhood photos when you're dealing with self-hatred or negative self-talk, reminding you that you're being mean to that younger version of yourself? It's almost as if wearing a scent from your past makes it really easy to make that connection between your present and younger self—at the risk of sounding sooooo intensely over-therapized, you feel a lil closer to that “inner child”. Anyway, if you can tolerate your old fragrance—or frankly, even if you can't stand it!—I recommend trying out your teenage perfume again, just for the intense wave of nostalgia and the bizarre comfort that comes with it.