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I was bestowed with a nickname throughout my younger years: Smellanor. When I decided to go by Elle, the nickname evolved with it: Smell. I’m always a sucker for a fun rhyme. But it did make me hypervigilant about maintaining what I actually smelled like, vowing that this moniker would never manifest itself into reality. Thus began my ongoing journey into the wild world of fragrances.
Years later, during one of my many late night TikTok binges, I stumbled across my first set of perfume-inspired image carousels that assigned scent profiles to abstract concepts, almost each one accompanied with a slowed-down version of Robert Miles’s Eurodance hit, Children. The age of 18, for example, has a scent profile of sweat, vodka, lip gloss, musk and lace. Looking at old photos too long smells like paper, iris, amber, musk and cedar. The first time passing a joint includes grass, fog, smoke, lip gloss and (obviously) cannabis.
The majority of these images – made via the perfume database site Fragrantica – focus on adolescent nostalgia, twinged with the specific sense of melancholy associated with 2010s teenhood. But they possess such universal relatability that I reckon any generation can get in on the action.
Seeing your childhood bestie for the last time. Realising their love for you is gone. Going to school after a fight with your parents. Even the concept of loneliness has a scent: concrete, vetiver, linen, blood, cigarettes.
On TikTok’s feed, these carousels are a nice reprieve from a deluge of reality TV fight clips and obvious AI slop compilations. These perfume slideshows are strangely comforting, despite their often depressing content.
Well, not all depressing. The last day of school, for example, has a peppy scent profile of watermelon, sweat, icy poles, solar notes and cigarettes (a popular aroma). Laughing at your own joke smells like cherry blossom, strawberries and sugar, with solar and ozonic notes. The last day of work includes coffee, lipstick, amber, woody notes and mint tea. Even the whole month of September 2004 smells like walnut, nail polish, dried rose, black cherry and incense.
Even fictional characters have been assigned scents. Breaking Bad’s Walter White has sea daffodil, azalea, old books, sour milk and lily of the valley. Family Guy’s very own Lois Griffin allegedly smells like pink Himalayan salt, floral notes, lemon zest, linen and rosemary.
There is some scientific backing as to why these images might affect insufferably sentimental people like myself, since odours do have the innate power to trigger memories. Our nature-savvy ancestors used this ability to help with tracking and navigation and now, instead of hunting mammoths or avoiding toxic plants, modern humans use it to flood our neuroreceptors with unfathomable nostalgia.
Perhaps these scent profiles have the potential to be used in far more powerful ways. Got a job interview you’re nervous for? Spritz a bit of lemon blossom and guava on your neck to remind your future employer of the youthful freedom they experienced back in 2008. Seeing your ex? Rub some sugar and vanilla behind your ears so that they can’t walk into a bakery without thinking of you.
There is a certain magic interlaced within all of these images. In a time when the internet is packed to the brim with run-of-the-mill influencers selling plastic garbage, AI bots regurgitating decades-old tweets, and obvious ragebait content, young people are still handcrafting aesthetics like the halcyon days of Tumblr mood boards. Some things, it seems, never change.
Plus, it’s nice to know that I can use a milquetoast form of biological warfare whenever I want. If you ever smell a mix of coffee, sweat, pasta sauce, smoke and lipstick, you know it’s me. You’ll never get away from the smell of the woman that loves you.
