What scent/smell immediately transports you to a specific time + place (good or bad)?

Fun Fact: This is called the Proust Phenomenon

Question

What scent/smell immediately transports you to a specific time + place (good or bad)?

Fun Fact: This is called the Proust Phenomenon

Wine Guy · Answer

Cash Money Hand Soap: LeNOSE is now live for friends and family!

I'm So Fancy My Soap Smells Like Money

This limited-edition luxury hand soap literally smells like fresh $100 bills. If you don’t know what fresh $100 bills smell like because you were born after paper money was replaced by Apple Pay and meme coin crypto scams, then you’ll be happy to learn this fragrance features notes of clean linen, cool ink, delicate iris, and attainable wealth.

Dylan · Answer

L'Eau D'Issey EDT: takes me back to a very specific time in my life and no i will not be elaborating on that (first time in my life i've been mysterious)

Wine Guy · Answer

Desert Sandalwood Hand Soap: Yeehaw I'm A Sandalwood Cowboy

This luxe sandalwood hand soap with tasteful notes of iris, vetiver, and cardamom will transport your nose to the most delightful version of the American Wild West—a gorgeous frontier fantasyland where the coyotes let you pet them and the cowboys are all horsegirls. Reminds me of Santal 33. Made with olive oil and aloe vera, it cleans effectively without drying out your hands.

Jes · Answer

muscle car exhaust: There is a specific way cars from this era smell when they drive by that immediately takes me back to my childhood. My dad was a mechanic and a drag racer and our house had the garage where he and his friends congregated to work on their cars.

Jenny · Answer

vacation the pool: I love this scent!

Anna · Answer

Jimson Weed: My neighbor grew them in his garden and their smell transports me back to those hot Philly nights when they were in bloom. Even Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings evoke the scent and memories for me!

Abby L · Answer

troupe by capsule: Takes me back to early pandemic era but in a fun way

Julia Burton · Answer

Marley Floor: The smell of vinyl, wood, canvas, sweat, and hairspray - my childhood

Katherine · Answer

Fresh Cannabis Rose Perfume: Freshman year of high school, spring 2008.

Jamie Flynn · Answer

Copertone spf - that’s my southern California childhood!

Megan Huntz · Answer

Moschino Cheap & Chic: My sweaty skin plus this fragrance and Barcelona in the summer of ‘98.

Lauren Duggan · Answer

Neon Amber Eau de Parfum 3.4fl. oz.: My Husband’s perfume on our wedding day: notes of vanilla, whiskey and cigars. This scent puts me in a daze.

Cecilia · Answer

Damp Dorm Carpet: Humid air, late August, it’s move-in weekend of 2014. I just moved across the country to my northeastern liberal arts college. My dorm building had this oppressive mildewy smell that was exacerbated by the summer heat. The warmth and excessive walking in and out of the building by excited freshman and their parents scuffed up the smells of just about anything that had been spilled on those carpets over the last 10 or so years. Anytime I am in a humid, carpeted room, the almost sweet smell transports me to that weekend.

Tracy · Answer

eucalyptus takes me back to driving through The Presidio in SF: We lived in SF between 2008-2013. One of the last things we did on our farewell tour was a drive through The Presidio with the windows down.

I went back for the first time in over a decade last Fall for work and booked a later flight home just to have time to drive through with the windows down before heading home. I cried with joy as I was flooded with memories.  I truly did leave a piece of my heart in San Francisco.

Sophie B · Answer

Badedas Herbal Bath Oil: When I was little I would often spend the weekend with my grandparents. I would take baths and they would pour this lovely green herbal bath oil into the bath. The bathroom overlooked their garden and one of my earliest memories is waking up to the sound of morning doves in their guest bedroom. Badedas is a German product and smells like the forest. My grandparents sold their house but every time I smell this product I think of my weekends there.

Belkis · Answer

kaffir lime leaves my dad asked me to bring back for him from thailand. upon my return we immediately had to rush my dad to the hospital & in the ensuing days he was diagnosed with the cancer that would kill him only 8 months later. the kaffir lime leaves rotted in my luggage by the time I got back home.

April · Answer

Clinique Happy: This was my perfume for so much of junior high school and a little bit of high school. Also was so popular at the time in general it reminds me of 90’s/ 2000’s teen core.

Josefine · Answer

Love Spell: Reminds me of: every girl in middle school in a nauseating haze of this after gym, butterfly hair clips, Mariah Carey, and going to the mall.

Alexandra · Answer

Meyer lemons!

Kt · Answer

Lip Smacker Dr Pepper Lip Balm: Holy grail item for the bulk of my existence, sadly relegated to the RIP drawer instead of amply in stock at any and every drugstore.

Nothing compares 2 u

Nicole Anderson · Answer

Beach honeysuckles: Honeysuckles bring me back to summers at my grandparents beach house with my cousins, specifically the splintery weather-beaten wood of the deck beneath our feet, the humid air off the Atlantic Ocean, sand sticking to the sunblock on our skin, music and chatter in the background.

Doom SFX · Answer

Domino's Pizza: I know it’s not “great” pizza, but when I was growing up this absolutely slapped after a long hot summer day at the pool. The smell of a dominos is very specific to me, and it always transports me back to that carefree childhood feeling. I also worked for them as a delivery driver in college! Despite making my car smell permanently of pizza, I still don’t mind catching a whiff of Dominos.

Jamie · Answer

clean and clear morning burst: all any of us used for 9 consecutive years at summer camp, so nothing brings back memories of the shower caddy and pre-teen angst/joy like morning burst :’)

amy groome | mid-flight · Answer

Eau D’Hadrien | Annick Goutal: My signature citrus-y scent for years and years, until I stopped wearing fragrance altogether. Takes me straight back to late 90s NYC, wearing hard-won Susan Lazar sample sale suits and black DKNY opaque tights to my first big job in the beauty biz. Olefactory flashbacks are no joke!

Sam Childress · Answer

The Four Seasons Sharm el Sheikh: Spent such a lovely weekend here (on the Red Sea) and all their bath products were L’Occitane, a mix of their almond and verbena scents. I still keep L’Occitane almond hand cream in my purse just to remind me of this trip!

Sarah Cooney · Answer

The Junior Club: There is this sort of sunscreen/salt water/slightly damp clothes/calamine lotion/damp firewood scent that I've smelt in exactly two places in my life and they were both my favorite places in the world: the junior club at my yacht club, where I spent my childhood summers sailing, and the infirmary at my boarding school. It's peculiar that the exact same scent was in both places miles and miles apart, but it's something that deeply resonated with me. It's a scent that always told me that I was welcome, but also that I was there for a good time. Both places have now been extensively renovated which is devastating to me, because the scent is gone and there's not even a trace of it left.

Analisa Burns · Answer

strawberry hard candy: abuelita core

Meaghan · Answer

The E.T. Adventure Ride: The ET ride in Universal Studios has such a specific smell that I have loved since the 90s. No idea WHAT it is- faux woods smell?! Fog machines?! Need to know if I’m the only one that’s ever said, “omg it smells like ET Ride” before.

Steve M · Answer

The Smell of My Psychiatrist's Office: This is going to be a suspiciously specific memory, but there's something about the smell of my psychiatrist's office that brings me back to elementary school and going over to a classmate's house after school. I'm pretty sure I'm being psyop'd because there's a weird degree of coincidence. There's a lot of Southern Plantation/Antebellum architecture in affluent areas of Charlotte (where I grew up and where I live now) particularly the neighborhood around the elementary school I went to. My psychologist's office is definitely modeled (or converted from) one of these kinds of houses. The kicker is that it smells exactly how I remember elementary school smelling whenever I would go over to classmates' houses. The specific memory is a mix of nostalgia and envy: Nostalgia from the desire to be a kid again, envy from having grown up very poor and seeing the wealth and class disparity and wanting that sense of security.

I'm sure this is a CIA OP.

Miranda · Answer

Revlon Outrageous: It's 2003 and I'm living in a house with with three roommates near Keele in Toronto. It's the summer of The Blackout (power outage throughout parts of the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, and most parts of the Canadian province of Ontario). I think I only bought this because it was on sale but I can smell this picture over 20 years later 😂 It's discontinued but some say Kristen Ess The One is similar.