Perfume Selves

On constructing a sense of self with scent

Perfume is a delicious cross over of many of the concepts I’m concerned with artistically. Ephemeral and transient, beautiful, sometimes strange, evoking memory and nostalgia, used to define a sense of self.

The last one is the heavy hitter, fragrance as a sense of self, and a sense of home. The kind of home (and the kind of self) you can revisit anywhere and anytime you want. Prior to 2021, my perfume selves could be solidly split into four eras with no crossover. The transitions between these scents were solid lines in the sand, declarations that I had shifted and changed beyond recognition, and needed to inhabit a new fragrance.

These four eras are as follows:

Wearing MCMC Noble
(mostly jasmine)

I’ve just graduated college and am trying to find a place to live. Feeling like a stranger in my own city, attempting to wrap myself up in any comfort I could possibly find, trying to find beauty in the mundane daily reality of an adult for the first time, following a pretend checklist of life events set out for me by no one but my own mind and societal expectations.

Wearing Commodity Book
(spicy green, woody cedar)

I’ve been married for a year and a half, aimlessly making art, feeling rootless and confused about feeling rootless. Planting a garden for the first time, drying the sheets on a clothesline in the sunny backyard of a tiny one bedroom house, sinking deeper into the bath as I pull bricks one by one out of my relationship and watch it crumble around me.

Wearing Kiehl’s Original Musk
(musky patchouli and tonka, with a hint of dirty rose)

I’ve just moved into my own apartment, running on the adrenaline of abandoning the checklist I’d so diligently been working through, the adrenaline of starting over. Walking to my new neighborhood bar alone, falling in love with the wrong people, having sex with strangers, rubbing up against new versions of myself, and learning to identify which ones are real.

Wearing Maison Louise Marie No. 9 Vallée de Farney
(peppery citrus geranium with a vetiver base)

I’m still alone, growing stronger in my own bones, and confident too. Learning that my shyness was a lie I told myself all along, biking uphill to work everyday, and downhill home—the waterfront stretch on my nightly commute pulling me out of myself, the swoop into my neighborhood putting me back. Writing poems, devoted to the studio, still in love with the wrong people (person) until the right one came along.

After my Maison Louise Marie No. 9 era, I moved across the country which naturally called for a new perfume. I definitely wasn’t the same version of myself anymore. Around this time two really wonderful things happened: I discovered a niche perfume store in Philly called Perfumology, and my TikTok algorithm put me onto Perfumetok. An entire new world opened up to me. One where I cared about top notes and dry down, sillage, and finding a million new perfumes to sample.

My experiences with perfume until this point were pretty straightforward: I’m in a store, this smells good. I walked into Perfumology the first time with the thought that I would find a signature scent for this new Brittany. Pretty quickly it became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to narrow it down to one scent anymore. (I didn’t really want to—sampling perfume is fun.) So instead of distinct eras, or concrete perfume selves, the last few years are peppered with perfume fragments. Little blips of scent and memory.

Wearing Masque Milano Tango
(deep warm spicy, cumin and amber)

I’m pulling new-to-me books of poetry from R’s poetry collection, reading in the sun of a new apartment, watching the east coast leaves turn yellow and red and orange and then fall.

Wearing Lake & Skye 11 11
(white musk, clean skin)

I’m showering at night, my muscles sore, comforting myself as I grow and change—some things broken and some made whole.

Wearing Perfumology L’Ima
(bright green, wet garden)

I’m driving back from working a wedding, a different setting but the same world, trimming stems, putting flowers in their places, feeling grateful.

Wearing Kismet Olfactive The Poet
(grapefruit, powdery musk)

I’m trimming prints in the studio, preparing for a show, rearranging old writing into new forms, old heartbreaks into new words.

Wearing Masque MilanoWhite Whale
(salty, aquatic and musky)

I’m swimming at Rock Run, ice cold water, fruit packed into a jam jar, sun drying my tangled hair, letting the humidity form a bubble around me.

There are, of course, even more perfume selves from the last few years. Like the version of me who wore Libertine Fragrances’ Soft Woods to my grandmothers funeral because I had worn it for weeks prior and was comforted by the woody floral scent, even though it was May. Or the version of me who wore You Or Someone Like You by Etat Libre d'Orange to every floral job I worked in the spring of 2021, so that I forever associate the sweet mint smell with the hectic rush of wedding setups.

The best part about perfume, about scent and memory, is that I can smell any one of these fragrances and all of the sudden a former version of myself is summoned into the room. 2024 Brittany can conjure 2016 Brittany, 2019 Brittany, and the Brittany who wore that one gardenia scent on vacation. I can even try on my old selves for a day. If I’m feeling weak and codependent, No. 9 makes me feel strong and independent. If I feel like I’ll never see the color green again, L’Ima makes me feel like I’m walking through a spring garden.

I’m as sentimental about my perfume as I am about my writing. Like my stacks of diaries, I save every empty bottle. I can reread, sniff, and remember. Saturate myself in nostalgia, even though the leftover scents, like the former versions of myself, are only a ghostly imprint.