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Welcome to Back of the Napkin, musings from Serviette for the cultured world.
With nostalgia bait at an all-time high, it seems there has never been a better time to live in the past. Yet there is something to be said for the frustration of searching for something that feels truly new amid a sea of “re”s: revivals, reboots, reissues, rereleases, and other cultural acts of exhumation. But the medium of perfumery provides an exciting new landscape for interpreting the past, one that feels both refreshingly earnest and almost threateningly personal.
It’s hard to overstate the effect of scent on memory. If you’ve ever been sent, without warning, back to childhood by the smell of freshly mown grass or ambushed by a whiff of your ex’s signature scent in the wild, you know exactly how powerful the connection is. But the mechanism behind these so-called “scent memories” has remained somewhat of a mystery until more recent years.
Though it was long believed that scent was relatively unimportant as an area of study (compared to, say, sight or touch), we now know that smell played a crucial evolutionary role. Our early ancestors relied heavily on their noses, using their sense of smell as a sort of mapping system that allowed them to recognize and recall their surroundings—an aromatic GPS, if you will.
Researchers found that when scent molecules interact with and bind to their corresponding odor receptors, signals are sent to key areas of the brain, particularly those that are associated with memory, learning, and emotion. If the smell is deemed “important” by the hippocampus (olfactory bouncer that it is), it is filed away and stored indefinitely, waiting to be activated once more by those same receptors. The effect of scent on memory is so strong that odors affect our brains even when the molecules are no longer present; one brief encounter can leave an impression long after the evidence has vanished.
The desire to reminisce certainly seems to have a direct effect on the fragrance industry. Notes like violet, iris, and aldehydes are officially back in vogue, and fragrance forums abound with people on the hunt for “vintage” and “vintage-inspired” perfumes. For many, these fragrances are portals to the past, a sort of olfactory time travel. (Justice for “old lady” perfumes!)
Serviette’s own fragrances have been a source of nostalgia for many. In fact, Frisson D’Hiver was largely born from a sense of longing for the past, a love letter to a childhood spent amidst the Canadian Rockies. Calabrian bergamot swirls beneath a frosty ice accord before softening into musky, vanillic glow, unfolding softly like a bittersweet memory. One reviewer perfectly captured this wistfulness, writing, “It makes me feel just a bit sad of what once was, what I once was, some time ago, before the seismic shifts and knowledge collapsed under its own weight.” Another added, “The orange blossom in this is just perfect, that smidge of sunscreen so many of us adore (nostalgia?)”. If you’ve yet to give it a try, you might just be surprised at what it unlocks.
Is there a hyperspecific smell from your past you’ve been dying for someone to recreate? Or perhaps a latent emotion waiting for the correct molecule to set it free? We thank you for taking the time to read—whether you’re yearning for a reminder of memories past or preparing to misremember the ones still ahead of you, we sincerely hope you find them.