by Sheila Heti
HEIDI: Is that still available?
LESLIE: I wish it were. They reformulated it. I should go on eBay and try to buy some unsealed original. But the association with Love’s Baby Soft is that it smells like babies, it smells like baby powder. So it puts us in the mood of cozy, warm, enveloping cotton.
HEIDI: I didn’t use baby powder on my kids. I wonder if they’ll have that association.
LESLIE: Exactly. Maybe not. The current fashion in perfumes I find very depressing. A lot of people smell like vanilla blackberry ice cream: very vanilla, very musky, but with fruit layered on top.
HEIDI: So how do you break those down, moodwise? Musk is sex. What’s vanilla?
LESLIE: We did a smell test with hundreds of people, and we determined that vanilla was the number-one favorite fragrance among New Yorkers.
HEIDI: I hate to tell you this, but I’m wearing a vanilla scent. It makes me feel like a cookie. A happy cookie.
LESLIE: Yeah, that’s the association, because people think of ice cream and baked goods and pudding. It’s warm and sweet. I buy a lot of avant-garde perfumes that you can’t categorize. Frédéric Malle made a perfume with Dries Van Noten—I mean, he made it, but it’s called Dries Van Noten—and to me the notes are phenol, which is an industrial solvent, and burned rubber. It’s objectively the nastiest, most disgusting thing, but I love it because it’s very strange, it’s original, and it’s the farthest thing from all those horrible cheap celebrity perfumes, like the Nicki Minaj and Britney Spears; they’re all making the same thing: musk, vanilla, berries.
HEIDI: How much of it is education and how much of it is scent exhaustion—that you’ve smelled so much you just want something new to happen to your nose?
LESLIE: That’s what happens! My perfume cabinet’s a bit like an archaeological dig at the back. I have a bottle from my grandmother and a bottle from my deceased mother-in-law that are just historical items. And then I have—
HEIDI: Do you ever smell them?
LESLIE: They’re pretty oxidized at this point. Perfumes do have a shelf life.
HEIDI: But would you ever do a little spritz in the air just to have a moment with them?
LESLIE: It’s a good idea, like it’s a ghost. The truth is they’re so far gone that they’re not pleasant to smell anymore. Just like with clothes, you may have a few pieces that you go back to all the time, but there are certain things at the back of the closet that you don’t wear. Perfumes are the same way. If you have only three perfumes then you’re stuck, because it would be like having only three outfits in your closet—of course you get sick of them. You need to diversify. Get samples.
HEIDI: So when people choose those musk, vanilla, berry scents, what are they saying?
LESLIE: The vast majority of Americans put no thought into what they wear, fashion-wise, or what perfumes they wear. A lot of people just lead functional lives. A lot of people don’t know what they’re doing when they buy perfume, and the people selling perfume to them don’t know what they’re doing, either. So people will buy Britney Spears’s perfume because they like Britney Spears, and it’s the biggest piece of shit ever. They’re not really choosing it to match their personalities. If you want to be serious about it, you have to spend some time and explore by yourself. With fashion, you have to have a personal vision of what you want to wear, and mix things together. It’s the same with perfume.
HEIDI: Here’s why I never had an interest. My mom used to wear Lauren by Ralph Lauren, so when I was a kid I would try to wear that perfume—
LESLIE: That’s actually a pretty good one.
HEIDI: Well, it gave me a migraine every time I wore it. As a result my curiosity shut down. I thought, Okay, perfume makes me sick, I guess that’s just not going to be part of my world.
LESLIE: You have to get there. You have PTSD for perfumes.
HEIDI: I do!
LESLIE: It’s possible to get beyond that. I think you can get beyond it.
PROJECT
THIS PERSON IS A ROBOT | LESLIE VOSSHALL AND HEIDI JULAVITS
A smell scientist sniffs coats in a busy New York City restaurant’s coatcheck closet.
(A night in February, sleeting, twenty-two degrees)
TICKET #410
WOMAN’S SHEARLING-LINED GRAY WOOL JACKET
I think this is a thirty-five-year-old woman who’s coming in from New Canaan or Westport. I smell cigarette smoke in the pocket. Maybe she’s a secret smoker. But it’s not obvious on the coat, it’s almost like she must . . . There’s something she puts in the pocket that has cigarette smoke on it. I think people know this is happening.
TICKET #391
WOMAN’S BROWN PUFFER WITH FAKE-FUR HOOD
This one’s really coconutty. This is someone who wants to be in the Caribbean right now. She wants to be transported by a smell that makes her think of sunscreen.
TICKET #418
WOMAN’S BLACK ELIE TAHARI PUFFER
This person is a robot. A lifeless robot just walked in here. I don’t smell anything. This person is probably like one of those people in the movie Safe who are chemically sensitive. It’s like unscented soap, scentless, dye-free, fragrance-free deodorant, fragrance-free laundry detergent. It’s a complete absence of anything. Let me see if her friend is also a robot.
WOMAN’S BLACK WOOL KENNETH COLE CAR COAT
Oh my god, this smells like it’s been in an attic. Smell the armhole there. Really, really musty. It’s been in storage with a bunch of old clothes, or it came from a Salvation Army. They don’t wash those clothes, I know because I buy a lot of clothes from Salvation Army, so everything acquires exactly the same scent. Yeah, so who is this person? There’s the robot friend or partner who’s afraid of scent, and then there’s this person who doesn’t realize that she smells moldy, so I guess I would question whether she has a sense of smell at all. It’s the woman who’s afraid of smell hanging out with a woman who can’t smell.
TICKET #398
WOMAN’S DOUBLE-BREASTED OLIVE WOOL JACKET WITH BABY-BLUE-STRIPED SCARF
This is suffused with the classic musky—the current fashion—musky, vanilla, with a lot of blackberry. This would be someone under thirty. I would have to say this is a woman, or a man who’s cross-dressing.
TICKET #412
MAN’S BLACK PUFFER WITH LEATHER TRIM
(Coatcheck woman comes to claim coat.)
That was an original classy scent that I would need to sniff out a little longer to identify. It smelled like class and money. Like the leather on a Rolls-Royce. Goddamnit, I need the coat back!
TICKET #401
MAN’S BARBOUR OILSKIN
Oh, this is terrible. This is a deeply conventional man, this is exactly what I was complaining about. The terrible, conventional men’s aftershave called Axe. It’s the biggest blockbuster. The old generation, people in their sixties and seventies, buy Old Spice, but Axe is marketed to teenage boys. Then they grow up and keep wearing it.
WOMAN’S TAN WOOL J.CREW COAT
This smells like really powdery violets. This is someone who is refined and subtle. It’s a very nice scent. I think she’s with the wrong guy. Yeah, I feel for her. It’s gonna end in . . . They’ll probably make it until the kids are out of the home, and then she’ll realize that there’s really no reason to stay married to him.
TICKET #397
WOMAN’S NAVY BLUE WOOL DUFFEL AND STRIPED WOOL SCARF
This coat smell has a base of bananas. This is another one of the trendy fruit-cocktail perfumes. It’s like banana and vanilla yogurt, it’s what young children smell like. The scarf is sour-smelling. It’s like hay, sour hay. This is probably someone who lives in Warren County, New Jersey. The perfume ran out of juice long before the evening was over. But the hay is just natural.
TICKET #376
WOMAN’S BROWN WOOL ANDREW MARC COAT WITH FUR HOOD
This is a sweaty person. Something’s a little bit more real. Stale perfume and sweat, and the perfume is so degraded you can
’t really identify it. So I would say this is a young lady who goes out a lot and either doesn’t have time or doesn’t care about her hygiene. Who doesn’t make any attempt to use deodorant or wear perfume.
TICKET #314
WOMAN’S TOPSHOP CAMEL BOUCLÉ COAT
This woman doesn’t wear perfume, she uses only a very basic soap or bodywash. It smells like someone who showers a lot, blow-dries her hair a lot, doesn’t wear perfume—doesn’t make a big impression. The coat is kind of beige, the scent is kind of beige. Someone who’s not going to go into a room and dominate it.
TICKET #299
MAN’S NAVY G-STAR RAW PEACOAT
It’s a pretty clean scent. Yeah, it’s a good smell. Subtle. I think this is a good guy. It’s not disgusting aftershave, it’s a pretty clean avant-garde scent. It goes away after smelling. I would say this guy is gonna be a quieter, more thoughtful person. He uses scents but doesn’t douse himself, so he’s not trying to draw attention to himself, but he is thinking about it.
MAN’S NAVY WOOL COAT WITH HOOD
Ugh, this is like the airport, the cheap airport. Yup. This is definitely a deeply conventional scent that men put on these days, in huge quantities . . . With men you can’t tell, because a lot of the deodorant also has that vile smell, so I can’t tell if it’s . . . it’s in the body of the coat, too, so I would assume that it’s maybe a combination of deodorant and cologne. And it’s pretty consistent, so it could be someone who really likes this stuff and has bought the whole line—lots of it. When you shake the coat you get another big bloom. He wants to be the big man in the room.
MAN’S BLACK WOOL COAT
This is cleaner. . . . These kinds of scents are more popular in Europe. It’s pretty nice. It’s spicy-citrus-powder, rather than tobacco-leather-citrus. It’s baby powder with a little citrus on top. I think we have the first guy who’s super-subtle and quiet and thoughtful. It’s a very smart scent, someone who’s more of an intellectual. But I think all these guys are straight. And then there’s the guy who just doesn’t know better. He’s a bore. And he loads himself up with the scent.
TICKET #323
WOMAN’S BLACK DKNY COAT AND BRIGHT BLUE KNIT HAT
The hat smells of strawberry shampoo. On the coat, this is another deeply conventional raspberry-blackberry scent I’m picking up. So this is like some twenty-something office girl. But still kind of a kid, because of the hat that smells like a kids’ strawberry shampoo.
WOMAN’S PLAID WOOL GAP JACKET
This is another robot. There’s nothing. She’s one of those people who’s so clean, and who uses only unscented products. There’s a little bit of a smell of the other woman’s coat on this coat, and that’s the only thing. This Gap lady is just a total cipher. But she hangs out with a young woman who has a little bit of something going on.
TICKET #420
WOMAN’S BLACK WOOL COAT WITH FUR COLLAR
Oh my god! This is someone who cares. This is someone who really cares. It also helps that it’s real fur, because fur holds the perfume much better than wool. There’s no smell in the coat, so I think that she put the coat on and then sprayed perfume as she was going out the door. I’m guessing it’s someone who’s busy, busy social life, changes coats all the time. Probably has a lot of coats and spritzes as she’s on the go. So that’s why the coat doesn’t have a personality. The coat is like a dead coat that’s never been worn, but the fur collar has a lot of smell on it. The scent is gardenia, very sophisticated. The fur collar has lots of smell personality.
TICKET #429
WOMAN’S BEBE BLACK-AND-WHITE-PLAID COATD WITH BLACK-AND-WHITE WOOL SCARF
There’s definitely a high-end perfume in here I can’t identify. But this is someone who cares, who’s put some thought in. Again, powdery-musky is the dominant scent. She’s been spraying it mostly on her arms, because there’s nothing at the collar. Maybe a little bit here, a little bit of perfume at the front of the placket. You have to guess that she grew up with parents, like a mother, who cared about perfume, so even though she’s probably twenty-three years old and in some kind of entry-level office job, she’s put some thought into what she buys and wears. You can tell she’s kind of delicate and classy. She doesn’t have a lot of money, but she’s thought about it, and the scent is very subtle—probably grew up in private school, but her parents are not giving her any money.
MAN’S ARMANI JEANS BLACK WOOL OVERCOAT
Oh no. This is another bad match. This guy has doused himself. I won’t even make you smell it. Enormous quantities of the cheapest possible . . . It’s the combination of aftershave and a lot of soap. This guy’s afraid of his body odor and he compensates by dousing himself in this stuff. She’s delicate and thoughtful and making the most of not having a lot of money, and making good decisions. He probably has more money, but doesn’t think about things very deeply, just grabs whatever. He’s also big in every way: the coat is big, the smell is big.
COLLECTION
TARA WASHINGTON’s knitted hats
SURVEY
40s
“I’m Korean, late forties. At my age you’re an ajumma, you’re supposed to get a perm and wear shapeless clothes accented with a visor.” —MARIE MYUNG-OK LEE
AMY MARTHA McGURK I always carry my Revlon Cherries in the Snow lipstick, even if I’m not wearing it, because I bought it in high school when I saw a model with coloring similar to mine wearing it. I mentioned it to my mother because I thought the name was kind of funny, and she got this weird look on her face and said that was my nana’s (her mom’s) signature shade, and she died with a tube of it in her purse. My mom still has that tube, and I hope it eventually gets passed on to me, but for now I have the same tube I bought in high school (I’m forty).
KRISTIN SJAARDA I remember someone saying to me, “After forty, it’s time to up your game. You can’t get away with just throwing something on.” I think she was talking about expensive bras at the time.
UMM ADAM Since I turned forty, and my kids have grown older, I’ve had time to think about myself and my identity again, so I want to look good, wear more color and more trendy clothes. I bought some hot-pink and bright orange clothes to wear at home—colors I could never have imagined wearing in my youth—and I am still looking for the right clothes to wear outside the house, something trendy but modest and Islamically appropriate. Something that identifies who I am.
K. L. CANDELA In my second year of university, when my consciousness was raised, I dropped the nail polish, the makeup, and the dresses, and broke out the jeans and black T-shirts. As I’ve moved into my forties, however, I have that desire to return to the feminine, to wear makeup, to feel glamorous. I wish I could go back in time and use the beauty I had in my twenties and parade it, enlarge it. I feel a very strong inner metamorphosis brewing, and it’s hard because now I look in the mirror and it’s almost rearview.
LISA FRANZETTA I’m almost forty, but I still want to wear tight pants most days.
IVY KNIGHT I’m constantly worried about what I’m wearing because I’m nearing forty and I wonder if the clothes I choose are age-appropriate. My husband is in his fifties and he wears jokey T-shirts. He has a neon-green one with a picture of Jabba the Hutt and underneath it says “Original Gangster.” He gets assaulted with compliments when he wears it. I don’t think I could wear that out. I don’t want to start wearing sweater sets and little white gloves, but I don’t want to be in miniskirts and stilettos. I’m trying to straddle the line between how I was dressed when I was in my twenties—slutty—and frumpy.
STEPHANIE DINKMEYER When I was going through exposure therapy for a panic disorder, I wore a piece of old jewelry from my great-great-aunt Winnie. She didn’t marry until her forties. She traveled to 126 countries. I needed her courage.
NANCY FORDE I am forty-six and a single mother of a four-year old. In my thirties, I liked vintage things, but since turning forty, I have veered more toward easy, athletic casualwear for comfort and practicality (as a sin
gle mum of a baby, then toddler). I tried for most of my thirties to have a child with my then partner, and the struggle certainly did not help make me feel attractive or womanly. I left my partner three days before I turned forty. A year and a half later, I pursued IVF on my own and gave birth at forty-two. In forty-one years I had never felt so attractive (in and of myself, not “for” anyone else). It was a time I was not trying to date or meet anyone. The joy I felt carrying a pregnancy to term contributed to my positive feelings. Nowadays, I don’t look in the mirror much. If my clothes have no food on them, I can go outside.
CHRISTINE MUHLKE At a certain point I realized it was more punk to dress like a “normal” person and infiltrate the world from the inside than to have everyone treat you like a freak. Now I’m just a bougie mom with an Hermès bag who talks about how she had a nose ring in 1987.
LINDA HESH I grew breasts at age forty. Might be a thyroid thing.
ANITA DOLMAN My favorite shirt has a lot going for it. It’s soft and flannel and my favorite shade of blue. But none of this is why I love it. I love it because I’m turning forty this year, and it reminds me of how much I have learned in that time, and what it means to be comfortable. I saw it on the rack this winter. It was $8, which clinched the sale, because one of the many things about myself I have grown comfortable with is my frugalness.
KATJA PANTZAR I recently started a new gig as a broadcast journalist and have had positive feedback about how I look on camera and in general. This is a surprise, because at forty-three, I think I’m sort of a late bloomer for a TV career, especially in a country (Finland) full of beautiful women. When I was hired, one of the things that I was told was that they liked my “look.”
