Scent Memory

“I carried to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had let soften a bit of madeleine. But at the very instant when the mouthful of tea mixed with cake crumbs touched my palate, I quivered, attentive to the extraordinary thing that was happening inside me...”

A passage so revelatory, it inspired its own phrase, and gave new meaning to scent memory. “A Proustian Moment” as it came to be called, refers to a sensory experience that inspires the recollection of memories of time past, or in the case of Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time,” even those long forgotten. 

Taste and smell are closely linked as are smell and emotion, in fact, they are stored as one memory. Most of these memories, and therefore our sensory preferences, are formed during childhood. When triggered, certain scents recollect not just memories, but the emotions and feelings stored with them.

Maison d’ Etto explores these moments of connection with the debut of scarves. At first glance, a scarf may not seem like a natural extension of a fragrance brand, but perhaps that is because you have been wearing them wrong. Award-winning French-Armenian perfumer Francis Kurkdjian warns that “perfume doesn’t last long on dry skin,” especially during warmer days, and instead offers the alternative of misting hair, clothes or scarves with fragrance as the molecules “move with the air, diffusing the scent,” thus leaving a longer lasting impression.

One of my most treasured possessions is a collection of my grandfather’s handkerchiefs and pocket squares. To this day, I delicately inhale them, hoping for the lingering scent of fresh laundry mixed with his musky cologne to take me back to idyllic days spent on the golf course under the warm California sunshine… I can’t help but smile when the striking, spicy aroma of Shalimar envelopes me along with the large, silk scarf borrowed from my mother… and finally, the faint scent of Terre d'Hermès still lingers on my first Carré Cavalcadour purchased ages ago by a boyfriend while skipping past the Avenue George V boutique on a summer Sunday afternoon. Time stands still, and for a brief moment, I am carried back to specific instances in the corners of my mind, which elicit the emotions associated with them.  

Today, more than ever, we mourn the loss of days gone by, loved ones lost, and human connection. Perhaps the greatest smell is actually not a smell at all, or at least not one we can define by tangible terms, it is instead the unspoken and invisible language of the ones we love and the feeling of home wherever we find ourselves in the world.

To quote another literary legend, “You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home… and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us.” We cannot bottle happiness or turn back time, but for a brief moment,  we can be transported home, an idea or place that means many things to many people. For Dostoyevsky, and even for me, it means love…