Your perfume heartwrenchers: smells from another time

[GoldfishParade]

I'd like a thread about two types of perfume:

• The ones you wore "back when" that you can't smell without feeling your heart wrench, and
• The ones that were pulled. RIP, favourite fragrances.

Mine:

• That turquoise Ralph Lauren one. I was 14 and my gran bought it for me as my very first perfume. I remember loads of us wore it as young teens.
• Anna Sui Classic: I remember my mum gave this to me one christmas maybe when I was 16 or 17, but the scent of it now is just beyond my reach. I'm tempted to buy a bottle just as a reminder.
• JPG Classique: I bought this for myself aged 19 when I emigrated and got my first grown up job. I cant smell it without being taken back to the girl I once was.
• Next came a few trashy Cacharel perfumes: Amor Amor and Scarlett. I was 21 or 22, carefree, working in the south of france. I like how back then I just chose what smelled good to me, without thinking about effect or complexity or anything.
• Heure Bleu: when I was a child, my best friends house smelled of something, something sweet and comforting. It wasnt until I was in a perfume shop three years ago and smelled this that it hit me in the heart. Her mother must have worn this perfume. I smelled my wrist as I walked home, the power of the memory was overwhelming.

My RIP favourites:

• Sicily by Dolce and Gabbana: I thought this smelled amazing, glossy and quite glamorous but not aggressive. Why the hell did they pull it?! And they said they were bringing it back, so where is it?!
• Love Chloe: this was quite a weird little perfume. It was somehow rice-like but also not sweet. I loved it. As usual they put it out there for 3 years or something and then pulled it, replacing it with some other sweet floral thing.

Perfume is so personal isn't it and smells different to different people. I detest the smell of Chanel no 5. I was once bought a bottle as a present and had to regift it to my mum. Everybody else loves it though, apart my dh who also hates it.

Perfumes that bring back memories. Exclamation! - bought this as a teen with my pocket money. Poison - the first perfume I wore when I started work (used to drench myself in it and induce migraines in other people!), Obsession - my signature scent for years, Eternity also wore it for years, remember the bung? It came out once and the entire bottle got spilt in my suitcase 🤦‍♀️.

These days I wear Daisy for every day wear and Creed Aventis for going out.

Most missed discontinued perfume - Fragile by Jean Paul Gaultier. Loved the bottle!

Antelope parfum by Weil was discontinued in the mid 80s, it was beautiful, I think you can still get the EDP but it doesn’t come close. Loved 5am by Yardley wore it in my teens decades ago.

I'm loving reading your stories 😊

I’m with you on Love, Chloe OP!
One of my all time favourite beauties sadly discontinued . I have two sealed back-up bottles that I treasure, and will cry when I one day no longer have that lovely fragrance.
There are no other discontinued perfumes that really HURT like that for me.

Lots of nostalgic perfumes, though. Just a few so I don’t bore on:

YSL Rive Gauche - reminds me of my Mum.

Dior Poison - my first proper perfume. God, I thought I was SO grown up and sophisticated, although I used to practically bathe in it, so was probably choking all around me

D&G Feminine (discontinued) - reminds me of my first love. Cheesy as hell, but he wore D&G Masculine .

I had one called Bond Girl from the Avon that I used to absolutely love and wore on nights out in my early 20s. Also Amor Amor for the same reasons.

I had a lovely perfume that I wore to a party when I was 15, many years ago, it was from Next and they've never done it since. It's 30 years old and I still have the bottle and very occasionally have a quick smell. Reminds of some really great times as a teenager

I was also a teenage wearer of Poison. Still like it though have moved on! I bought a cheap copy version a while back just for nostalgia.

My mum wore Coty L'aimant so I am fond of that. Not sure if it's still made.

There would be a fortune to be made out of recreating old much loved scents, surely?

Mary Quant Havoc was the scent of my teenage years. Also fond memories of Kiku, Aqua Manda, L’aimant..
A posh boyfriend bought me Cabochard in a tiny bottle with a grey velvet ribbon. I loved that. So grown up.
My mum wore Evening in Paris, in a little blue bottle for best. Tweed for every day.
I’m sad that Jo Malone stopped doing French Lime Blossom. It was my favourite. I now wear English Pear and Freesia, and Pomegranate Noir for evenings out. (It hasn’t been used for some time )

I wore this when I met my husband aged 17 I'd love to still be able to buy it as it would bring back so many memories

You can pick that Armani up still in those miniature collection sets that are generally sold in airports. I got one from Ebay which had that, Loulou, a Ralph Lauren one and a Fidji.

There's another- Fidji, I was about 11 and sitting next to a woman on a plane who bought a bottle- she seemed so sophisticated. The same holiday my Mum bought some Givenchy III and gave me her wee miniature gift with purchase.

Poison is a real divider, isn’t it? It makes me feel sick, I had to get off a crowded tube and wait for the next one once because the woman next to me had bathed in it.

Womanity I absolutely loved it!

Does anyone remember tobacco flower from the body shop? It must have been 2000 when I bought it as a cheapie to keep in my bag, but it was lovely. I would love it a dupe.

RIP all of the following:

Eau Libre - Yves St Laurent - first perfume, lovely, spicy unisex.(1970s)

Fidji - eau de parfum, Guy Laroche - my regular perfume for years - heady, floral

Joy - eau de parfum -the original by Jean Patou. Fabulous, heady floral I wore when Fidji disappeared. However, the reformulations were not a patch on the original, and now, sadly, the perfume is entirely gone.

L'Air du Temps, eau de parfum, Nina Ricci - my alternative to Joy - lighter floral, beautiful scent. Now gone.

I now wear no perfume as I do not like any of the modern perfumes I have tried. Somehow they are all too cloying and powerful.

Also I think the EUs forced withdrawal of many essential perfumery ingredients has killed the art of perfumery.

Oh @Namerchanger42 , I adored tobacco flower!!
@mononymous , I used to wear that Armani all the time.

L' Interdit and Givenchy III

They brought out some faint shadowy travesties with the name a few years ago, but they weren't the same.

Original pears soap. The one with cedar and rosemary oil.

Paris and Yardley Apple blossom.

All gone.

I didn’t realise my late Grandma wore Amouage Lyric Woman until I bought a tester recently and it smelled exactly like her!

The perfume I'll never stop mourning is Fendi, nothing smells as perfect on me. I also loved the Jimmy Choo rose gold special edition. I always got so many compliments when I wore it, none of the other variants quite hit the spot.
I recently bought Loulou as a little trip down memory lane but it smells completely different. I expected slight changes as I knew it had been reformulated, but it's unrecognizable. Ysatis is one of the only fragrances of my youth that seems to have remained the same. I wear it sometimes and pretend I'm the gorgeous 18 year old I was instead of the fat, saggy 50 year old I am now. Perfume is a powerful time machine!

My mum wore Coty L'aimant so I am fond of that. Not sure if it's still made.

I'm wearing it now . My granny always bought me a set when I was a teenager and I just hid it away as it wasn't "cool". I bought some recently when read it as a cheap copy of Chanel No 5. I tested this - spritz on each wrist - and they're very similar.

I wore a lot of YSL ones - Rive Guache, Paris and Champage - but all gave me a rash. I just looked at the ingredients and think that may have been the oakmoss. Plus Poison and Opium, of course. I really want to try Youth Dew now but difficult to test anything at the moment.

I love this thread...

Tommy Girl - my teenage years. The best!
Gucci rush - my first “proper” perfume.

The one I miss is City Glam by Armani. The most perfect scent for me. When they discontinued it I spent years looking for another perfume for me...

I found it - YSL Manifesto, love it!

Takes me back

Monsoon Wild Lagoon - first grown-up fragrance when I was about 16. Intoxicating.
Ananya Body Shop- again, takes me to my youth and being a sixth former.
Charlie (original). My mum's fragrance.
YSL Baby doll- in preparation for first 'proper' date I bought this. Felt so sophisticated.

Miss them all.

Unpleasant memories - Soft n Gentle pink variant, Shield soap, So!, Charlie Red and Exclamation.

Unpleasant smells I had to put up with - Blue Stratos, Brut and Old Spice.

Guaranteed to give me a migraine and/or vomit - Tommy Hilfiger (pregnancy, stifling hot weather for weeks and a pig of a partner who thought it was funny that it made me feel so ill)

Nice smells - Pears Soap, Carbolic Soap, 4711, a random giant bottle of French drug store eau de toilette from 1982 that smelled like sweet peas, honeysuckle and rose. And original Infacare (the new version smells like baby powder).

There were also the amazing mini bottle packs you could buy for a fiver in Boots at Christmas - one year I treated myself to both packs, so had Anais Anais, Cerruti 1881, Amarige, Chloe and a whole load of other classics. These days, it's all just single brands, so it doesn't have the same delightful pick and mix feel about them (and they're aren't a fiver any more, more's the pity)

Ones that I will never smell again - Garnier Neutralia bath bubbles and shower gels. Withdrawn from sale and I haven't found them abroad either, despite the name still being in use. Jennifer Lopez Still (a very, very intense and fun time with a guy I had no intention of staying with for long).

And the one that hurts most - Gucci II. My DB bought it for me one Christmas (he bought me random expensive/large gift bottles of perfumes every Christmas because he knew I wouldn't get them any other way) and I loved it so much, I rationed myself to no more than one squirt a week. He died in an accident. It was discontinued.

How I loved perfumes and makeup. And then real life got in the way.

Some lovely memories here.
4711 for my Gran
Je Reviens and Tweed, my mother.
Coty L aimant, smell of the seventies. Also Charlie.

Still like Ysatis and Anais Anais although I rarely wear perfume these days.

@VinylDetective thanks for the reminder about Harnell in Love. My mum used to keep a bottle in her handkerchief drawer.