Scented Memories of Our Fathers

by: Elena Vosnaki

 

With Father's Day coming one gives in to a little tender daydreaming. Is there a safer place than the arms of one's father for a child? Not only that, but dad figures have the advantage over moms in that they represent the first adult unto whom we project our need for admiration and our desire for being accepted. Moms can take anything, but dads usually require a certain amount of earning their praise. I recall gloating like a rooster when my own father paid me a compliment or nodded satisfied for something I had said or done. And how many times have we secretly (or openly) watched our fathers perform their daily ritual, shaving and dressing and grooming, presenting this Super Hero image to the world, such that we felt them invincible? Part of that mystique for some of us was their cologne or the scent of their grooming products.

 

 

My own hyper-elegant father has a fine nose for scent, catching me unawares even today with his witty and often to the point comments about my own fragrances. Back when I was a child his love of scent was decisive for my growing up to love it (alongside my other relatives who were also ardent fragrance users). Mom's perfumes were up on the dresser, playful dolls preening and posing for me to uncap and take long sniffs (and steal a spritz or two when no one was watching, only to be found out later from the lingering sillage) but dad's colognes were sitting on the bathroom shelf next to his razor and comb, imposing, solid, seemingly functional but feeling oh so good, all the same!

 

Little boys ape their fathers, wanting to emulate them. Little girls fall in love with their fathers, setting the bar for all the boys they will meet later in life and give a little bit of themselves to. Is it any wonder I fell for the boy with the good nose? No, some things are predetermined, shaped in the recesses of childhood, small pockets of the mind which we sometimes arbitrarily attribute to for various ailments and obsessions that run throughout our adult lives.

 

Rossano Brazzi

 

Dad was dapper and debonair at the same time, as I pictured him as a child, a Rossano Brazzi type; a fine stem of a man in jet black hair and green eyes, a silk scarf around his neck, a creative type whose grace of manner and speech could only be matched by the deified awe he inspired in me. Fashions changed and he subtly changed with them, always retaining his charm and personal style. And his colognes changed too!

 

What's probably my very first memory of his aura was Habit Rouge by Guerlain. It stood inconspicuously on the shelf, emitting soft clouds of downy softness. No rough edges, no hard outlines, as plush and as warm as a hug when tending to a boo boo on the knee. It felt somehow ... safe. Dependable. Delectable even, even for a small child who would be more attuned to the candied nuances of today's masculine colognes than those of the times back then. And yet Habit Rouge was formative, even though he didn't use it for too long. It taught me to appreciate resins, to enjoy that bittersweet air inside an apothecary's vault, to abandon myself in the hug of haze. It was a sensuous opening into an adult world, a world when the senses were stroked tenderly and expertly, a world I would discover a few years later. 

 

 

Brut by Faberge was a disrupting experience to follow. It erupted on the bathroom shelf like the creature from the green lagoon at some point, undefinable whether he got it through someone or chose it himself, a spirits bottle with a silvery metal dog tag hanging from its long neck, like some army utensil. It spoke in the tongue of butch. And my dad was far from butch, though he always had a virile air about him. The scent wasn't incongruent, an acid green arrow of a smell, hitting you right between the eyes. Mandom dictated that a specimen of the XY chromosome back in those days wore either this, Old Spice or Acqua Velva. At least in Europe (and southern Europe in particular), this axiom nevertheless also allowed for copious amounts of retro eau de Cologne (4711 or locally made Myrto or Menounos eau de cologne, usually in lemon, lavender and pine) being liberally splashed all over after a bath and rubbed in for cooling down and invigorating in the summer months. 

 

It was sort of odd that my father, given his Habit Rouge habit, didn't fall for Old Spice (the carnation and oriental charms of which I discovered first on the sillage of other men) or even for the Italian sports car allure of Acqua Velva. After all he did have a predilection for his very Italian Alfa Romeo, Sophia Loren and for pizzas in thin crust ...

 

 

Like I said, I'm not exactly sure who was accountable for the Brut. Certainly not a purchase of my mother, much to the hypothetical chagrin of Mad Men's ad executives who championed their deodorants and aftershaves to the wives and the mothers shopping for the men in their lives. Back in the 1970s and early 80s Brut was featured in regular department stores locally, which having the disposable space for bottle display lost no opportunity to exhibit them French-barbershop style, one by one on the glass like toy soldiers preparing for battle. 

 

The scent of Brut still lingers in my nostrils. Its fiercely aromatic, in fact spicy, nuance marked me with a decisive flair for the unpalatable and the inedible. It's the quintessential "bitter" character of the grooming products, products which are clearly not meant to be gargled with, no matter one's age, should tiny hands discover the trick of unscrewing the cap; the scent alone would stop any notion of imbuing. And I just love that still! 

 

 

What followed was a serial monogamy with aromatic fougères and heavy duty chypres. The pungent and assertive Caron's Yatagan with its galbanum bitterness, artemisia apothecary touch and its castoreum memento mori ... among the handful ofCarons circulating in the Greek market, it aired a totally memorable commercial of a man yielding a freshly sharpened scimitar. Dad smelled of dangerous complicity and a hint of brutality wearing it, which was in sharp contrast to his otherwise impeccably civilized manners. The contrast was enough to make me appreciate the challenge of non conformity. 

 

Then it was time for the cuir-leaning Trussardi Uomo (1983) in its fabulously posh black mock-croc flask bottle with the dog profile in gilt gold on the leathery material. Dad loved Italian style and Trussardi was a long-time steady on his arsenal. Eager to ape his taste, much as I was my mother's though her choices were softer, I bought for myself Trussardi Donna, the feminine equivalent, a chypre floral with a suede like tonality, in the white mock croc flask! I can safely argue that chypres appealed to me through my association with the geographical and cultural vicinity, but leather scents were a dyed in the wool case formed in puberty thanks to my dad. I'm the proud owner and regular wearer of Antaeus, Gomma by Etro, Bandit eau de parfum, Tabac Blondand many others largely owing to his indirect influence.

 

Things changed when bottles were finished. I fondly recall Azzaro pour Homme,Kouros by YSL, Givenchy Gentleman, Eau Sauvage, Aramis....They were all loved and worn.

New bottles also appeared when someone gifted him with something else, but the remaining juice in the bottle told its own babbling story sometimes. It is I who replenishes his stash today. I get that free pass now, earned through a lifelong interest in perfumes sparked by these secondhand experiences in my formative years. What can I say, Dad? Thanks for being who you are, you've a new cologne waiting for you to unwrap. 

 

 

So the ball is in your court: which scented memories of your fathers will you share with me in the comments?