Mother's Day is looming. The dilemma: How to condense into one reasonably priced gift item the incredible love you feel for the woman who burped you, helped tie your shoelaces, checked your math homework and diplomatically intervened that time dad started hollering when you rolled in at 2 a.m. after senior prom.
Perfume can be one of the best gift options for Mother's Day. Why? Because if one sense links mothers to their children, and vice versa, it is their shared relationship to smell.
"We have a fully functioning sense of smell by the time we are 12 weeks in the womb," writes fragrance expert Rachel Herz (no relation) in her 2007 book The Scent of Desire. Herz says studies show that "what a mother consumes while she is pregnant will influence her baby's flavour preferences."
The yearning for maternal scent associations can extend throughout a child's lifetime, and well past the life of the parent. A poignant example is Le sac de ma mère, a lovely candle from Camille Goutal, daughter of French perfumer Annick Goutal, who gave the world Eau de Hadrien and Eau du Sud.
In memory of her late mom, Goutal the younger created Le sac de ma mère from scents conjuring the hodge-podge contents of her mother's Hermès Kelly bag -- a profusion of tobacco, violets, face powder and calfskin.
Our sensory memory of our mothers can sometimes be a complicated, even counter-intuitive, draught. A friend of mine loves the smell of hair dye because it reminds her of her mother's Miss Clairol applications, while Rachel Herz still adores the pungent smell of skunk because she heard her mom say she liked it on a family car trip when the writer was five years old.
Conversely, it would be wrong to assume that any scent you like will immediately be embraced by your mother, so exercise common sense when shopping for that perfect fragrance.
If, for example, Britney or Paris or the Olsen twins have their name on the label, run. Obviously.
Beware, too, of anything that proudly claims to smell like freshly washed laundry. She's your mother, not a Maytag. She does not want to be reminded that she was your personal laundress from the time you were born.
A beautiful bottle can be talismanic. Mom might not wear the fragrance every day, but if she likes it she will likely want to leave it out and look at it. Pick something that looks good atop a chest of drawers. Anything from Chanel -- with its iconic shape and historic narrative -- will do quite nicely.
Marian Bendeth, a global fragrance expert who runs the Toronto-based consultancy Sixth Scents, warns against making age-skewed assumptions about mothers' scent preferences. There are new fragrances aiming for a younger market (Yves Saint Laurent's new citron-based Elle, for example) that can easily appeal to older women.
"Start rethinking your mom," Bendeth urges. "She can wear anything. Don't pigeonhole her. Look beyond the typical granny scents."
Liza Herz wears Guerlain's Mitsouko, as her mother and grandmother did before her.
-- Canwest News Service
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