In Defense of Fragrance

I recently read an article about the recent boom in the fragrance market.  In the article, the author posited that this rise was at least partially due to Covid-19 and how people in isolation had forgotten the natural smell of other people, so a market rose up to meet the demand of people not wanting to contribute to those odors.  She also touched on the classist and potentially racist associations with scent.  While it was all very interesting, I think I have a different take on it.  

Granted, my own family has a long association with pleasant fragrances.  My great grandparents’ homes were the last I can remember that smelled neutral, except for the bottles of perfume in the bathrooms.  By my grandparents’ generation, potpourri and air fresheners had taken over their homes.  But that is not because some of those things didn’t exist before.  Potpourri & incense have been used since antiquity to scent homes.  But my great grandparents were all farmers, practical and poor people for whom these things would have been a luxury.  When I recently inherited a few of my great grandma Daugherty’s things, I was even surprised to find that she had a few Alfred Hitchcock novels and an apricot scented candle in an apricot shaped pot.  This kind of frivolity goes against my perceptions.  The candle had never been burned, and I can imagine my grandma just lifting the lid and getting a little treat of apricot fragrance to lift her spirits.  And although she was poor, she wore perfume.

In my grandparents’ homes, everything smelled “nice.”  There was lemon scented all-purpose cleaner, pine scented floor cleaner, scented fabric softener, and even sometimes a pot of spices on the stove, the scent wafting out into the house.  Neither home had scented candles regularly, but there was scent.  My grandpa’s bathroom smelled strongly of Old Spice and Irish Spring, my grandma’s of Tabu and lotion and the gentle scent of soap from the bowl of rose shaped pieces arranged in a bowl on the counter.

The home I grew up in had its own strong scents.  My mom loved scented candles, and she’d light them when she came home from work, so when we arrived from school there would be one in the main bathroom, one in the kitchen, and one in her bedroom.  There were different scents in the rooms, all seasonally appropriate, and as you walked from room to room, the gradients changed and it would all make the house feel all the more cozy.  She too would sometimes have spices going instead of a kitchen candle, and while she had potpourri throughout the house, it was rarely strong enough to contribute.  We did not have laundry scents; my dad’s sensitive skin required unscented products.  But my parents both wore perfumes: my mom had a selection of various options and my dad primarily wore Brüt, then Aspen, the Le Mâle.  Our shoes weren’t allowed in the house, and my mom would spray them with Brüt on the porch.

In the 1990s, Bath & Body Works opened and my mom’s fragrances became those offered in their lotions and body sprays, which largely replaced the need for as much perfume.  She would smell like Pearberry, Coconut Lime Verbena, or “Gingham.”  I have two brothers, and as each of us started puberty, the Brüt we shared was replaced with scents that were more individualized.  My grandma chose mine, giving me a bottle of Tommy by Tommy Hilfiger, which is how I smelled though high school and college.  My older brother received Abercrombie & Fitch’s Woods, but I don’t remember what he used before that.  I also don’t remember my younger brother’s fragrance preference, but knowing him he likely used what my dad and my grandpa used.Continue Reading