What was your first fragrance?
Dior Addict! I still have the original bottle that my mom bought for me!
— Christine
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J’adore by Dior. My parents bought me it for my confirmation when I was…maybe 14? I thought it was so elegant and grown up and I used it sparingly!
It was an Avon fragrance called Foxfire. I think I was 12 maybe? It was the first real perfume I ever got, and I remember how much I loved that stuff. Several years ago they brought it back for a little while, so I got another bottle for nostalgia and I still loved it!
I was 11 and my friends at school wore Coty Wild Musk, so I bought it too. By 16 I was wearing classic Dior, Guerlain
Do celebrity scents count? If so then I think my proper real perfume (not including fragrance body sprays) was Britney’s Midnight Fantasy. I could always smell another midnight fantasy girl too as the sweet smell was so recognisable at that time!
But my first first big girl perfume was Miss Dior Cherie. I remember feeling real fancy and the bottle is still pretty cute with that bow lid.
Absolutely they count, imo!
Dioressence from my mum and L’Air du Temps from my dad. And of course, the inescapable Jean Nate splash. Bet the JN makes some people laugh; it does me…
Oh, Jean Nate, what memories that brings back. I think that scent is the most prevalent trigger for memories and Jean Nate was a happy time in my life. Charlie was another one!
I had to think back about 100 years it seems…but it was Shalimar. I’ve become so sensitive to fragrances that I can’t imagine wearing it now.
I am aging myself by saying this, Charlie in grade school.
The first I remember having is one year for the holidays (maybe in my stocking?) I got a variety of different colors/scents of Love’s Baby Soft.
I can’t remember which of these was my first, but YSL Babydoll, Anna Sui original and Dream, and Mugler Angel were my favorites as a teen– Angel is the only one I still wear.
Avon Pur Blanca… even now I remember smelling the pages of Avon brochures in highschool (some of my classmates were selling Avon), saving money and getting a bottle I sparingly used to save up…
I loved that one too!
Love Baby Soft (from my parents for Christmas)! I loved that one so much at that time. I think I was 13 or maybe 14?
Yeah, I’m THAT old! 😘
I can’t recall specifically, something atrocious I’m sure. You guys remember those drugstore perfumes like……..it had a blue top….was it Navy? Or something like that? Something with a blue name? And vanilla fields. there was also something in a dark blue bottled embossed with stars and moons. I can’t remember the name of anything apparently, but I bet the second I smell one the memories will hit like a dump truck.
Since then my tastes have become more refined and specific to what my skin chemistry doesn’t chew up and spit out.
Oh my, I can chronicle my entire life by the scents I wore.
The first, that was actually mine, was Ben Hur. I had borrowed my mother’s scents from time to time, mostly without her knowing about it.
Then there was the citrus phase that I always associate with the beach as I was living on the coast in Southern California. As kjh mentioned above, Jean Nate and the Charlie were popular scents during those years.
I wore Eternity for a million years but the scent that I most associate with my life is Joy. I have 2 bottles on my vanity right now. I have told this story on the blog before but I purchased my first bottle of Joy from Meadowood Mall in Reno, Nevada. I had read about it and decided I wanted to try it. At the time I was working as an RN and making good money. I was single and most of my money went to makeup and clothes. I was the original clothes horse. Anyway, I purchased the smallest size of the perfume. It was in a little teeny tiny black bottle with a red cap. I got it home and couldn’t get the top to come off. So the next day my Mom went with me to return it and when the sales associate looked at it she said that they had inadvertently given me one of the show bottles and that it actually didn’t have anything inside. So, she was getting me a new bottle and remarked that for the amount of money, insert the amount here, you certainly don’t want to get an empty bottle. My mother turned to me and said, “My G** you spent what for that perfume”. She still teases me about it to this day. I know this is a really long answer but I have to mention one other thing really quick. While my daughter and I were in Europe, my mom babysat our cat, Sophie. When I got home she told me that she had made my brother come with her one day just to show him all my lipsticks on my vanity. She told me that no one needs that many lipsticks. She buys one and wears it until it is gone then buys another one. I don’t think she has ever had more than one lipstick at a time, in my memory. I didn’t tell her that that is only about 1/4 of my lipsticks. The remainder are in my armoire!!
I don’t remember exactly but I’m sure it was one of those teen 90s fragrances like Malibu Musk, Love’s Baby Soft, Charlie, Lady Stetson. Ahhh memories
White Shoulders…it was the 70’s ☺️
It was amor amor from cacharel, still have the original bottle from 2009 !
Chanel Chance. Got it when it first came out, which was around when I graduated from high school. I still have the bottle too!
Now I really had to think about this question as it was sooooo long ago. It could have been Jontue by Revlon. I know I was pretty keen on it.
Exclamation or Navy. My first higher end fragrance was Calvin Klein Eternity
Jicky. I was young, maybe 6. It was a nice bottle in an Easter basket. That was years ago, I always have a bottle on hand even though I only wear Dior Addict. My mother wore Bellogia, it was exotic and wonderful but too sophisticated for a little girl I guess.
I was a pre-teen in the early eighties so it was the typical bottle of Love’s Baby Soft It was such a soft, sweet, powdery scent. I hated it! I quickly graduated to stealing my Mom’s Calvin Klein Obsession perfume.
Ungaro EDT by Emanuel Ungaro, received from my mum. I was 16. This question should come with the warning : “Memories. Do not open” 😉😎
Correction: EDP
Malibu musk is the first that I can recall… That was during the era that we all actually wore Teen Spirit, and not because of the song LOL. I think I wore gap dream after that. It wasn’t until college that I discovered good perfume.
Yardley’s Lily of The Valley.
Heaven Sent – the 80’s version. It has been reformulated/rereleased a plethora of.times.since 1936, but my mom introduced me that 1980’s version and the newer versions just aren’t the same…
I’ve always had a weakness for celebrity fragrances, so it was Antonio Banderas Spirit as a teen. I got a pink plastic wristlet with it as a freebie and carried it until it got a permanent stain, when it went into residence on one of my family’s chests of drawers.
When I graduated from Middle School, I received Ambush by Dana, Rive Gauche by YSL, and I bought myself a bottle of My Sin by Lanvin for myself with some of the money I received. Then, for my birthday, a friend got me a Halston gift set. That started my fragrance obsession. It was 1978, and many of those fragrances are no longer available, but I remember how much I loved them all, and I wish I could still get them.
Moonlight Path body spray from Bath and Body Works was my very first. I desperately wanted a bottle of Miss Dior Cherie, which came out when I was a teenager. I couldn’t afford it, so I bought a bottle of Charlotte Russe Refuge instead.
While I have the vague memory of receiving Malibu Musk and Electric Youth for Christmas one year, I don’t remember specifically when, although I remember one or both was sold with a stuffed animal (i.e. the teddy bear was holding the bottle of Malibu Musk).
However, the first bottle of “real perfume” I picked out for myself was Design by Paul Sebastian sometime in junior high or a bit earlier. The perfume department was next to the shoe department at Herbergers, so every time we went shoe shopping, I would spray myself with it and finally my grandma treated me to a bottle of my very own. I haven’t smelled it in years, but looking at the notes, I haven’t deviated much all these years later.
Probably something awful like Love’s Baby Soft in elementary school. Then in junior high my parents gave me this mysterious bottle of musk oil with no label on it. It was in a thick smoked glass jar with a matching stopper. I’ve never encountered musk oil as wonderful as that one again. My first serious perfume was Bal a Versailles, which was what my mother wore in the 70s. She gave me a small bottle in high school.
Oh my! I asked for and received a bottle of Chantilly perfume from my mom for Christmas 1987. Receiving it made me feel grown up and sophisticated. I have not used Chantilly in over thirty years but I will never forget the joy of spritzing it on before school.
I think my absolute first was Charlie in middle school, then Exclamation in high school and Tommy Girl in college. After that it was Ralph Lauren’s Safari and Red Door from Elizabeth Arden. My current favorite is Hermes’ Le Jardin du Monsieur Li, but I also really like Narcisco Rodriguez For Her and Marc Jacobs Daisy. Although, I wore Daisy so much one year at Christmas while working that when I put it on now I’m right back there. It’s not a bad thing, just kind of funny the kinds of memories that stick.
Charlie Red back in the early ’80s when I was a teenager