When my 12-year-old son requested a bottle of CK One for his birthday, I laughed. The mini-1990s revival in our household, as styled by our tweens in their wide jeans, tie-dye T-shirts and Adidas Spezials, was complete. But what I hadn’t anticipated was the effect that this hyper-nostalgic scent — now permanently wafting through the house — would have on me. The second the molecules hit the air, I was catapulted through time to June 1995, off to Glastonbury after my A-levels, obsessing about a boy, wearing glitter on my eyelids — probably the most carefree summer of my life. It was confusing, to say the least.
Launched by Calvin Klein in 1994, this fresh citrusy scent, a revivifying cocktail of bergamot and green tea with subtle base notes of musk and amber, bottled the zeitgeist. Its industrial design was groundbreakingly gender-neutral — a simple frosted glass container with a screw top — encapsulating the prevailing trend for the androgynous waif look, epitomised by Kate Moss and the other models used in the perfume’s seductive marketing campaign. “The ad was monochrome, nonchalant, grungy, with ambiguous relationships and friendship groups — all very suggested and unspoken,” says perfume expert Lizzie Ostrom, aka Odette Toilette. “But it is actually a very polite perfume — office appropriate, even.”
It is perhaps this easy-to-wear aspect that has made the scent, now a respectable 31 years old, endure quite so well. CK One was created for the American retail giant by Alberto Morillas, the renowned nose of countless other classic scents including Armani’s Acqua di Giò and Kenzo Flower. “I wanted to create an elixir of the soul,” the dapper 75-year-old told me on a visit to London recently. It took him two years to develop the formula and many trips to and from NYC on Concorde to meet with Klein himself. The result, he said, “is timeless”.
It may be timeless, but I was fickle. CK One was just a stop on my perfume journey, which began with The Body Shop’s iconically sweet White Musk — an entry drug into the world of fragrances if ever there was one. CK One was my stalwart, that is until I switched to Eau Dynamisante by Clarins, a zesty, aromatic fragrance that reminded me of a glass of Pimm’s and which, subconsciously or not, felt a more fitting olfactory accompaniment to dipping my toes into adult London life. I could not get enough of the stuff, and was convinced I had found my signature scent until, one day, it suddenly started to smell a bit odd. Had the bottle gone off, or were my own pheromones letting me down? I persevered for a bit until, on a work trip to New York, walking through Saks on Fifth Avenue, I was stealth-spritzed by a sales assistant peddling Narciso Rodriguez for Her. And that was it, I was in love.
Woody and musky, with top notes of rose and peach, it came in a sexy pale pink opaque bottle, as if the liquid inside was adult content. Grown-up and strongly feminine, it chimed with a new stage in my life — a new relationship, a new job and a new decade. I wore it until I fell pregnant with my now CK One-doused 12-year-old.
During those early baby years, I found perfume — any perfume — too affronting, at odds with the odour of domesticity and, in any case, nothing could beat burying my nose in my toddler’s hair and inhaling deeply. Then a couple of years after the birth of my daughter, I dabbled with Prada L’Infusion d’Iris, a powdery, floral fragrance with notes of orange flower and neroli, which in its smart silver-embossed glass bottle seemed to affirm the incontestable fact that I was now a woman with myriad responsibilities approaching 40.
Again, I thought it would probably end up being my forever scent — rather by accident than by intent. Until a few years ago, on a trip to Paris I popped into Les Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle. As I walked out of the shop, I wafted the last sample I tried under my nose again. En passant by Olivia Giacobetti. It was so ephemeral I wondered if I was actually smelling anything, and yet I could not stop sniffing. Later I looked it up online. “Paris, on a bright morning in May. At the bend of an alleyway, a light breeze carries the scent of lilac.” I was done for.
I ask Ostrom if this is now a standard trajectory. Our mothers, after all, often stuck to one scent their whole adult lives — Chloé by Chloé, in the case of mine. It is, Ostrom reassures me, quite normal to suddenly get the ick. “The meaning we attach to perfume changes. It might go from something that smells exciting and signifies ‘the new me’ to a scent we smell on everyone and that is no longer distinctive.” There is also a strong cultural-fashion element to perfume, she says, which is harder to determine than with clothes, for example. “When we get sick of clothes, say skinny jeans, we can point to something and say it no longer communicates what we want it to communicate about ourselves. The problem with perfume is, it is often totally indescribable, but our brain is telling us there is something in this scent style that isn’t me any more.”
Like fast fashion, fragrances are now released with increasing velocity and frequency, encouraging consumers to be more capricious than ever. As if to match our shrinking olfactory attention spans, many brands are now releasing smaller vials of scent, and limited-edition seasonal bottles too, such as organic perfume company Ffern, which drops four scents a year.
Although my home is still currently laced with CK One, this haze of nostalgia is set to lift. The bottle is running out, and my son has announced he is bored of it already.
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