Youth Dew - my childhood perfume memory

Youth Dew by Estee Lauder. Misnamed?

There are some scents that have been so popular for so long, that they must surely provoke Proustian memories by the thousand. This is a tale of one of those perfumes.

A couple of months ago I found an almost empty bottle of Youth Dew on my gatepost. It was almost as if I'd attached a sign to announce 'perfume fanatic, this way'. The real reason was that the council's recycling department had left it on the pavement, and a neighbour had tidied it a bit.

It got me thinking. Did I know what it smelled like? Well, no. So while I was stuck in Heathrow - again - I remembered the curious incident of the scent on the gatepost and gave it a sniff. And that's where it got even more curious.

In the back of my olfactory memory I'd stored my evidence in what perfume smells like. A favourite aunt and a glamorous neighbour who worked in the local department store's beauty counter were the only people I knew who wore perfume all the time. So I'd learned early that perfume has one definitive scent; that all others - no matter how beautiful - seemed like mere variations. 

I own over 300 bottles now, including classics that existed long before Youth Dew was blended and bottled. But Youth Dew is that scent. Not Chanel No 5.0, not Mitsouko, not Miss Dior. This one. That's my childhood memory of perfume.

So instead of flowers defining my baseline, I had spiced powder. The name and the scent have a dissonance, don't you think? Youth Dew seems innocuous and light. But this smell is darkly seductive, polished, structured and groomed. This scent wears a corset and plucks its eyebrows. But perhaps it forgets to wash the dishes. It's Joan in Mad Men. Roger might buy her Chanel No 5 to impress her, but she buys this for herself. And she can happily go into a carpeted department store and ask a patronising assistant for a bottle of Youth Dew without anyone raising their eyebrows. Perhaps that was its secret.

Youth Dew dates from an era when the smell was the reason women chose a signature scent. Forget the name, the box and the advertising, and go smell it. Observe the sensually slim ballgown bottle though, and when it's empty put it on a gatepost one day.

Stuck in Heathrow T4

So what do you do in Terminal 4 for three hours?

You can get a bit of exercise, walking from one end to the other, you can get a decent coffee, a smoothie and a wrap. You can catch up on your sniffing, which is what I did when fog struck The Netherlands and left a planeload of us wandering aimlessly in the air conditioned time warp that departure lounges become when you're not sure you're going to be allowed out.

T4 used to be the cool trendy one; now it's Terminal 5's dowdy cousin. 

All the same it's got its own Jo Malone, which was drenched in their pink rose that's raising money for their breast cancer charity. And naturally, there's a massive duty free palace with testers and smelting strips for your olfactory needs.

It was quiet. A Burmese women showed me all around Estee Lauder's collection, and we had a chat about whether she'd be able to visit her family soon, now her home is opening up again.  I was put off Beautiful some years ago as a gobby, arrogant, loud, rude distant relative wears it. When she announced that she always wore it, I was tempted to ask when she thought it might start working... I resisted. Anyway, a guided refresher in White Linen, Youth Dew and the rest was rather handy.

Then on to the new stuff. 

YSL's Manifesto was curiously familiar, but so many of them are. It's hard to be groundbreaking when you've got a bundle of launches every year, I imagine. But the reason this one smelled like something I know was that it smells like Says Alice, a special edition one of Mr C's cousin's commissioned for his sister's 21st. A coincidence.

So I headed for the men's section and Thierry Mugler's collection of tactile testers. It's right at the back. Just keep walking. I tried and loved the leather one and the Havana one, sweet tangy tobacco. I don't hold with this men/women/unisex breakdown. Thee agree some men's scents I'd never wear but that's not because they're for men, it's because they're god awful. This one is gorgeous and affordable. Bless them and their idiosyncrasies in a bland market. Go try and buy.

And next time you're stuck in T4, head to the back of duty free and sniff out some rarities.