are you the missing person?
Are you the missing person?
Do you smell like long-lost love, heart-breaking nostalgia, and summer skin? Have you always been that way—sweet, naked, and soul-crushing?
Maybe it is you. Maybe it’s all of you. A composite of the scents I’ve known, the memories I’ve kept. Because memory works that way, doesn’t it? A smell, even if barely there, can reach deep in one's heart, stomach, and mind. Pulling me inside and pulling me back.
My love affair with scent started a very long time ago...
The earliest I can remember is being at a store called Stiches with my sister. Along the white-lit walls, lined with graphic tees, skinny jeans, and chunky jewelry, there was a perfume shelf. The two of us would go along and smell each one, pondering the scent at hand. Most vividly, I can remember a diamond shaped cyan-coloured glass bottle with a clear cap. It must have been a rip-off of Brittany Spears Curious. I can still smell it now; some combination of vanilla, desperation, and early 2000's acne cream. I remember buying it (or my sister did, this was long ago after all), coming home, and my father saying it smelled like Rink Rat. This meant it smelled like the overly-scented girls who would go to the rink to watch the boys play hockey. Girls who hung around the village, smacking gum, smoking cigarettes, drinking far too young — all while dosing their Curious knock-off. This is my version of Teen Spirit.
There were many important scents that followed Rink Rat. As a pre-teen I had ripped out a page of a White Tea perfume tester from a magazine, and held onto it for years. I can remember sitting on my bedroom floor, flipping through the pages, and knowing it was so out of reach. It smelled like an older woman who used floral soap, with a touch of sophistication. Its real notes are rose water, vanilla orchid, and mandarin orange. It wasn't until two years ago that I purchased the bottle. I ran through it in a year — fulfilling my pre-teen fantasy without the age or sophistication.
Mid-way through my undergraduate degree, something really clicked in my brain. I realized how deeply scent affected my memory, my understanding of my surroundings, and what it meant to indulge. I realized then that there is a level of privacy to perfume — a deep intimacy only some come close enough to ever knowing. A closeness that Rink Rat could never achieve.
And here I am letting it all out on the internet.
Around this time, I had bought a bottle of Orange Blossom from The Seven Virtues; a Nova Scotian perfumer. This perfume smells like my second and third year's of study. It smells like the summer I spent in Sackville, the hardship that happened during those two years, and the small joys I found over that period. Joys like flower-picking, sun-bathing, cloud-watching, and partying late into the night and early into the morning. This scent was discontinued because the perfumer lost contact with the farmer in Afghanistan. Sourcing legal orange blossom in this region had been core to the founders story, and has become impossible to continue. When I went into the store yesterday I found out that they continued to carry old bottles as recently as three weeks ago. My heart was shattered knowing it had remained so within reach.
Since the discontinuation of Orange Blossom, I have rotated several scents. White Tea (as mentioned), Red Door (also by Elizabeth Arden), Orange Blossom (this time, by Jo Malone), Miss Dior (self-explanatory), Frangipani Flower (again, by Jo Malone), On A Date (Maison Margiela), Libra (YSL... I know, I know...), Flora (Gucci), Nomade (Chloe), Ombre Leather (Tom Ford), and most recently, My Way Ylang (Armani).
As you may notice from the above list of select perfumes, nothing has really stuck these last several years. Not the way that Rink Rat, White Tea, or Orange Blossom ever did. These perfumes are so deeply tied to the moments, the feelings, and the experiences I had while wearing them. Moments that seem fleeting otherwise.
I wasn't reminded of these feelings until I found Missing Person, by Phlur.
You know that feeling (it's a rare one), where something moves you in a way that is completely unexpected? It is almost nauseating, deep in the stomach while simultaneously managing to pull on each and every heart string? I have only ever felt this when missing someone I love. It is both the luckiest and most painful ache.
I had that exact feeling about two months ago. The second I pressed down to spray it, I knew it. But I couldn’t place how, and that's my trouble now. I didn't know where to place these feelings and memories.
Now that I own a bottle of Missing Person, I find myself spraying it and pausing, humming and ha-ing—trying to place the feeling. Who does this remind me of? Where have I smelled this before? It lingers like a name on the tip of my tongue, just out of reach.
I could tell you the official notes: skin musk, bergamot, jasmine; neroli, cyclamen, and orange blossom; white musk, sandalwood, and white wood. Phlur describes it as ”if nude were a person”
Some say it reminds them of a long-lost love. An actual missing person. And maybe that’s true for me too. But when I smell it, I don’t think of any one person. I think of a feeling—warmth, longing, recognition. I think of being sixteen, nineteen, or twenty-one; or yesterday. Of the moments that have spritz my skin and lingered long.
So I keep asking: who is it? Who am I remembering?
And sometimes I wonder—am I just trying to find myself in the scent again, through the trace of something I once loved?
Are you my missing person? Or am I?