Retro-Perfume, Aftershave Thread Has Internet In Collective State of Nostalgia

Whether it’s the first time we saw Goonies, or the earthy taste to the wooden spoon we used to scoop our summertime ice cream bites, we all yearn for nostalgia. We appreciate reminders that ferry us back in time to simpler days.

Perfumes notoriously serve to remind us of various life experiences. Well, a new Twitter thread is honoring several nostalgic perfumes that remind us of our youth.

“Name a perfume or aftershave that takes you right back to your youth?” Twitter account, Benonwine, asks his thousands of followers. And boy, did they respond in spades.

Name a perfume or aftershave that takes you right back to your youth?

— Benonwine (@benonwine) March 18, 2022

The thread quickly turned so retro, that I could feel my parachute pants creeping up on me (I’ve gained a pound or two since the 80s, admittingly). 

Yves Saint Laurent’s Kouros, Tweed (that’s the 70s), CK One (of course, of course), Gucci Envy, and The Body Shop’s Dewberry were among some of the nostalgic scents listed. 

Denim Aftershave made the list because we all remember the boys who smelled just like it. For days. There was Max Factor’s Le Jardin d’Amour. We all know girls who sported some Estee Lauder Youth Dew. 

How about some Hai Karate aftershave?

With nostalgic perfumes, it is more than just seeing the bottle that pokes at our old memories. It’s the scents. It is nothing new that a scent at at a time in our life can be tied with emotional response. According to an article on Harvard.edu, our olfactory mechanisms are strongly tied to our emotional circuitry. 

Smells are handled by the olfactory bulb, the structure in the front of the brain that sends information to the other areas of the body’s central command for further processing. Odors take a direct route to the limbic system, including the amygdala and the hippocampus, the regions related to emotion and memory. “The olfactory signals very quickly get to the limbic system,” Harvard’s Venkatesh Murthy, Raymond Leo Erikson Life Sciences Professor and chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, said.

This makes today’s fragrances more meaningful, given we now know they are penetrating our deepest beings. Some day, we’ll use today’s scents as a way to bring us back to these moments. That’s big stuff.

At one time, this Revlon Charlie commercial felt jet setting, modern. Now it reminds us of days gone. And that’s quite OK, friends.