The old Stowell’s Drugstore in Alden was part pharmacy, part OTC cough medicine and headache tablets, part gift shop, and a very large part old-school bewitchery in the form of dusty tins of Purepac Gentian Violet and Flowers of Sulphur that, in the 1970’s, were beginning to be neglected as modern pharmacology caught up with ancient remedy. It was also, in the days before we finally started catching up with the world and got our very own Ames store, the only place in town where a country girl could get her beauty on.
On pegs in the front with the main window on one side and shelves of Miss Clairol and Roux hair dye on the other, a few precious rows of Maybelline, Cover Girl, and Revlon products beckoned. Directly in front of the hair color a small glass counter was stocked with cheap cologne (Coty products, Jean Nate, Blue Jeans—before Versace took that name and ran with it) and a fancy silvery tray decked with testers.
Thus began my obsession, at the age of eight.
My first perfume was Emeraude, which at that time was carried in a huge jug of cologne splash in addition to the daintier, ladylike dresser-top bottles and purse sprays. It was cheap, and as I was limited to the amount of change I could raid from my father’s pants pockets I had to go with the colossal plastic bottle instead of the fancy spray. I took the label at its word, and splashed that on until the Dearly Departed at St. John’s Parish Cemetery could smell me coming. The nuns teaching at the school across the street from the cemetery were upset to find a third-grader drenched in cologne during the Stations of the Cross. My mother was upset that the cologne in question was Emeraude, which she believed to be too mature for an eight-year-old girl. She tried to placate both the nuns and my olfactory cravings with Love’s Baby Soft, which I despised from the start and still will not allow into my home after over forty years.
Now Frances was a piece of work in her own right, but she did at least TRY; and she did manage to shield me from much of the aggressive marketing of the day. Thus I had no idea that Coty Emeraude was presented as a rich, sultry extravagance worn out at night by ladies whose dresses would not have been approved by the Sisters of St. Joseph. I only knew that it made me feel like I was something other than a country girl without hope of a broader horizon, whose dress was not a handmade tent of a school uniform, who was something other than a bully target. I had not the words for it in 1974, but I knew that this was liquid magic that might not change form but certainly changed feeling. It would be years before I would learn that this phenomenon has a name—aromatherapy—and that it has a genuine function in promoting holistic wellness.
Perfume became a running gag over the years (sometimes literally, as anyone who can remember the stinkbomb that was Avon Zany can attest!) I wore it to bed. I wore it during my weeks at Baptist Camp, despite it causing me to present myself to the mosquitoes as a well-equipped buffet. I left Louie instructions to make sure I was well-scented with Youth Dew before singing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” and shoving what was left of me into the cremation fire, because sometimes I find humor in the most bizarre things. I have a perfume buddy who, when visiting from Florida, will go with me on sniffing parties—like wine tastings, but for the nose.
Most of us cannot afford a glamorous villa in Rio, but we can all transport ourselves for a short time with a spritz of Fresh Brazil Citrus. And I may be the ugliest warthog on the planet to some haters out there, but what is important is how I feel, and if a dab of Emeraude can make me feel like a beauty diva then that’s all that matters…and it comes without the recovery time and high price tag of a surgeon’s office!
On pegs in the front with the main window on one side and shelves of Miss Clairol and Roux hair dye on the other, a few precious rows of Maybelline, Cover Girl, and Revlon products beckoned. Directly in front of the hair color a small glass counter was stocked with cheap cologne (Coty products, Jean Nate, Blue Jeans—before Versace took that name and ran with it) and a fancy silvery tray decked with testers.
Thus began my obsession, at the age of eight.
My first perfume was Emeraude, which at that time was carried in a huge jug of cologne splash in addition to the daintier, ladylike dresser-top bottles and purse sprays. It was cheap, and as I was limited to the amount of change I could raid from my father’s pants pockets I had to go with the colossal plastic bottle instead of the fancy spray. I took the label at its word, and splashed that on until the Dearly Departed at St. John’s Parish Cemetery could smell me coming. The nuns teaching at the school across the street from the cemetery were upset to find a third-grader drenched in cologne during the Stations of the Cross. My mother was upset that the cologne in question was Emeraude, which she believed to be too mature for an eight-year-old girl. She tried to placate both the nuns and my olfactory cravings with Love’s Baby Soft, which I despised from the start and still will not allow into my home after over forty years.
Now Frances was a piece of work in her own right, but she did at least TRY; and she did manage to shield me from much of the aggressive marketing of the day. Thus I had no idea that Coty Emeraude was presented as a rich, sultry extravagance worn out at night by ladies whose dresses would not have been approved by the Sisters of St. Joseph. I only knew that it made me feel like I was something other than a country girl without hope of a broader horizon, whose dress was not a handmade tent of a school uniform, who was something other than a bully target. I had not the words for it in 1974, but I knew that this was liquid magic that might not change form but certainly changed feeling. It would be years before I would learn that this phenomenon has a name—aromatherapy—and that it has a genuine function in promoting holistic wellness.
Perfume became a running gag over the years (sometimes literally, as anyone who can remember the stinkbomb that was Avon Zany can attest!) I wore it to bed. I wore it during my weeks at Baptist Camp, despite it causing me to present myself to the mosquitoes as a well-equipped buffet. I left Louie instructions to make sure I was well-scented with Youth Dew before singing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” and shoving what was left of me into the cremation fire, because sometimes I find humor in the most bizarre things. I have a perfume buddy who, when visiting from Florida, will go with me on sniffing parties—like wine tastings, but for the nose.
Most of us cannot afford a glamorous villa in Rio, but we can all transport ourselves for a short time with a spritz of Fresh Brazil Citrus. And I may be the ugliest warthog on the planet to some haters out there, but what is important is how I feel, and if a dab of Emeraude can make me feel like a beauty diva then that’s all that matters…and it comes without the recovery time and high price tag of a surgeon’s office!