Confessions of a Perfume Junkie, First in a Series For People Who Just Gotta Stink Pretty

Scent, it is often said, is the sense most closely tied to memory. I remember finding an old can of pine-scented mosquito repellent and being instantly transported back to summer camp. My first experience of paid work and financial freedom came during a summer job at the southern California Renaissance Pleasure Faire, during which time I had a custom rose and musk fragrance created by the Perfumed Dragon. To this day it is the scent of exciting new independence.

I wore Chanel Gardenia from the Les Exclusifs line on my wedding day back in August of 2002, and now after almost nineteen years of marriage, I will wear it for romantic dates to remind me of our limerent newlywed days when just looking at my husband’s profile from across a room made my heart pound.

I can also recall wandering into Aromasanctum Perfumes at its former location in Salem, Massachusetts about fifteen years ago, and went home with half a dozen different oils: Scarlet Letter, Cool Violet, and Darkwoods in particular can take me back to that magical holiday. Likewise during a visit to New Orleans for my fortieth birthday, I discovered Dark Gift and Violet by Bourbon French Perfumes and Imperatrice by Hove Perfumers.

Certain scents can also call up favorite times of the year for me: October Moon by Aromasanctum, Pumpkin Amber by Wiggle Perfume, and Come Little Children from Sucreabeille’s Black Flame collection are to me the smells of Halloween. Glamorous winter holiday parties always call for a jewel-toned velvet dress and something dark and Oriental: Cinnabar by Estee Lauder, or Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium.

Another perennial favorite is Lady Jane’s Heliotrope, which I found as part of a Victoria’s Secret collection while shopping for some new clothes to take with me to Cambridge, UK for my semester abroad. Over the course of the next six months I made liberal use of Lady Jane, so that my woolens and overcoats began to smell pleasantly of heliotrope. When I got home that December, all the lotion was gone and the bottle of cologne was nearly depleted, and I went to Victoria’s Secret for more, only to find to my great chagrin that the fragrance had been discontinued…!! Gone, gone!

Even some twenty years later, I still had the single inch left in that first bottle, and one whiff would instantly transport me back to the green lawns, majestic architecture, and soft rains of Cambridge. I found several single-note heliotrope fragrances over the years, but alas, none of them could compare to Lady Jane. They were all sweet, pretty florals, but without the hint of smokiness (patchouli?) that made my favorite heliotrope so seductive and long-lasting.

It wasn’t until nearly 25 years later (hoarding that one near-empty bottle like Smaug the dragon on his mountain of gold) that I came across

Scentmatchers.com

Their mission? To recreate discontinued fragrances for those of us yearning after a beloved fragrance we thought we’d never smell again.

Their About Us page reads: “We now have over 28 years of combined experience producing discontinued fragrances, and to date we have sold over 100,000 individual bottles of discontinued fragrances.”

Behold — perfume junkie Mecca. Apparently it isn’t possible to copyright a smell, so Scentmatchers can replicate just about anything.

I couldn’t order a replica version of Lady Jane’s Heliotrope fast enough, and when it arrived, it was the exact twin of my beloved fragrance. I put a little spritz from my hoarded bottle on one wrist and a spritz from the new bottle on the other, and could not tell the difference. Even better, all Scentmatchers fragrances come in eau de parfum strength, and they produce one-ounce travel sizes and can custom-scent lotions as well.

Since then, I have ordered high school favorite Max Factor Magical Musk for myself, Tommy Hilfiger’s Freedom for my sister, Ralph Lauren’s Safari for a dear friend, and Laurent Mazzone's Hard Leather for my husband.

The quality of Scentmatchers' work is consistent and undeniable, and I would definitely recommend them to anyone who misses a particular beloved fragrance.