I hate your smell

I have noticed scent association before; as strange as it sounds, I recently used a face wash I bought daily as a teenager, and from nowhere flooded back memories of beach days and bonfires. The fragrance of the wash unconsciously brought how I felt those months using it. Quite romantic in a Keatsian sensual way, but my keen nose also detects memories of hate, and my most hated cosmetic smell is Guerlain’s perfume ‘Insolence’.

My first whiff of this perfume was when a promotions girl attacked me with it in Selfridges. Strong and pungent it has an undertone of something that really offends me. It reminded me of the smell of over enthusiastic perfume spraying in duty free, when you go all up your arm with different scents until there is no skin left, then feel sick with a headache for the entirety of the flight. This smell makes me ill.

And then came the hate association. There was a girl not to long ago whom I was unfortunate enough to work with. This person would drop a name at any opportunity, strut around dropping bitchy comments and orders to the minions (I was one) whom in fact she was no better than. I cannot fully express what a nightmare this girl was, and guess what perfume she wore?

Now my nose is super sensitive, and I can detect it everywhere, on the tube, on the bus, as a person passes. And the sad thing is, it makes me automatically hate them too. Even sadder is that I cannot bear to approach the Gulerlain counter for their pretty antiquated packaged eyeliners, and coloured pearly blushers due to the insolence of this detested scent.