Scent-ual Memories

Out of curiosity, I amble into Holt Renfrew in the Pacific Centre and ask if they sell certain perfumes that I wore in my teens and early 20′s. “do they still make Fracas?” one salesperson calls across to another. “Yes,” comes my reply, but my sole hope of finding it, she says, is to try high-end stores in the states. Which is not strictly true. I can also walk along Granville St. to The Perfume Shoppe in the Sinclair Centre and buy hard to find fragrances.

If you are new to perfume, Rana may start you off at the fragrance wheel.  Be honest about whether you favor “soft floral”, “floral aldehyde”, “floral oriental”, or any of its nine categories before she narrows your choice down to a subcategory-fresh, crisp, classical, or rich-that leads to the names of perfumes that you’ll like. In theory. Body chemistry is the wild card, and that can change, Rana says, forcing you perhaps to switch from a much loved fragrance.

Advertising plays the biggest role in the perfumes people choose, Rana says, and it shouldn’t. “You can wear the most expensive or the cheapest,” she adds. “It’s whether it works on you.”