Cake shops. Specifically French ones, patisseries with tartes tatins, vanilla slices and macaroons in unexpected colours.
There were perfumes, yes. Mostly people used them to disguise the scent of not washing very often. We like to forget this now, and think of fragrance as something to add at the last moment to complement our outfits (or lack thereof). At the time, people didn't bathe that often. Right until the 1950s there were children sewn into their clothes for the winter, in England. Really. (My mum taught some of them and reported that as they approached March the smell in the classroom was "ripe".)
Scent was used as a disguise, not as the added extra we enjoy now.
So there we were, with ladies wafting around in lavender, neroli, rose, violet, orris (the classic "powdery" scent as face and powders were traditionally perfumed with orris root from iris plants) and suddenly M. Guerlain creates an aroma of cake shops and you're supposed to wear it! Did Marcel Proust smell it? I do hope so. It would have been enough to make him take to his bed for a month while he came to terms with his confused emotions.
Spending two weeks in France, wearing Shalimar, staying in the Guerlain seaside holiday home and eating lots of ice cream, I've embedded the fragrance; it now reminds me of feeling relaxed and happy. So what's your holiday scent?
Shalimar By Guerlain For Women. Eau De Parfum Spray 1.0 Oz.
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