Coco Channel once said “A woman wearing the wrong scent has no future.” Well! I have been searching for my signature scent for most of my life to no avail. Yes, I wear perfume. But I often wonder if it’s the right perfume. I want my husband to be driven wild with desire by just smelling it. I want it to waft by in the street and for people to say to each other “Who IS that woman??? She smells divine!” I want it to be exclusive, mildly expensive, and chic. A long, long time ago, when I worked in a Muffin Break that is now something else, I used to serve a man every morning who smelled so good it left me reeling. He worked at the investment firm next door, he wore an overcoat, and I would have done pretty much anything for him had he asked me. He smelled exactly the way a man should. He never asked me for anything but coffee incidentally…I think I still had braces on my teeth.
Back to the search for a scent. A few months ago I found a bottle of Britney Spears Curious in Winners. My sister used to have it and I’d try it on every once in a while when we lived together. I liked it. So I bought it, wore it…and something curious DID happen. People started to ask me what I was wearing. They were smelling me…and liking it. I was browsing in an antique mall when a woman walked into the booth I was in, paused for a moment and then asked what scent I was wearing. She said she was very picky, but that I smelled just the way she wanted to smell. I was immediately embarassed. “Uhhh…it’s Britney Spears”. We looked at each other, laughed. “Well, you could pour it into an antique perfume bottle!” She said. It was a good idea, I thought. I wondered though, what’s the deal? Did I find my signature scent? Was it really Britney Spears?!? I did not foresee this happening! I don’t walk into gas station bathrooms in bare feet! I don’t drive my kids around with no carseats. I do not embody pop princess qualities. Why does the scent that works on me have to be hers???
I thought about it awhile, and maybe it doesn’t matter. I tend to build up ideas of how things will be, and make it impossible for them to turn out the way I want them to. The goal was to find the scent that makes me memorable, and I suppose I have. For now. Maybe I have to learn to be happy for good results, not insist on perfect journeys. When does life ever look exactly the way we’d imagined it?
I actually came across Britney’s newer scent, Midnight Fantasy in Winners just a week ago, and bought it. People seem to like that one too. At least it has a nicer bottle…
Brianna Carson's Blog 