When I was a little girl in the early \u201990s, I spent a lot of time hanging out in the home of an old woman named Alyce, a distant relative, who was something of a second mother to my mom. I loved padding across her plush cream-colored carpet, admiring her knickknacks, and breathing in the trail of the rich, spicy, amber scent that was unmistakably \u201cAlyce.\u201d Her signature fragrance was Est\u00e9e Lauder\u2019s Youth Dew, a scent that, despite being a remnant of the \u201950s, played a crucial role in my future fragrance palate.<\/p>\n
As I write this now, at the wise, womanly age of 38, I\u2019m directly facing a shelf in my home office with a selection of favorite fragrances from my collection\u2014the ones I always keep at arm\u2019s reach for midday refreshes. Sure, there are a few newbies in there, like Lore\u2019s passionfruit- and mezcal-inspired Disfruta, and Liis\u2019s tea-scented Ethereal Wave, but for the most part, my selection looks more like that of a glamorous senior citizen than a trendy 30-something: old-school Chanel, Guerlain’s Shalimar, original men\u2019s Stetson, Clinique Aromatics Elixir, Prada\u2019s original (and sadly discontinued) Amber, and\u2014you guessed it\u2014Est\u00e9e Lauder Youth Dew, resplendent in an opaque turquoise bottle just like the one I imagine Alyce used. While these scents run the gamut from floral to spicy to woodsy, they\u2019re all bold, unforgettable, and, in my opinion, timeless.<\/p>\n
But my admittedly old-school fragrance palate is not a popular one at this exact moment in perfumery. Perfume TikTok has been popping since the beginning of the pandemic and continues to be a thriving community of fragrance fans who want to share their enthusiasm for all things scent\u2026 except, apparently, when it comes to classic fragrances like my beloved Chanel No. 5 and its compatriots. Everyone knows No. 5 is a legend, but the resounding conclusion\u2014primarily among Gen Z\u2014is that it smells \u201clike a grandma\u201d or an \u201cold lady.\u201d And they often don\u2019t mean that as a compliment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
To be fair, I can see how No. 5 or Youth Dew may feel dated to some, the same way 2010s sandalwood scents smell very \u201cof a time\u201d to me. Mainstream perfume preferences fluctuate with time, ping-ponging from light and fresh to sweet and gourmand to woody and spicy and back again. Right now, we\u2019re in an all-gourmand-everything phase, where vanilla sillage bombs are forming the fragrance palettes of our youth. But what I don\u2019t understand is why bathing in a grand bouquet of symphonic florals automatically constitutes “grandma”\u2014or, more importantly, why people are so opposed to being perceived as one.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s some cognitive (or is it olfactive?) dissonance here, and I can see where it comes from beyond ageist biases online. While perfume notes still play a major role in how fragrances are marketed, I\u2019ve noticed a shift from scent-forward descriptions to a focus on \u201cvibes\u201d among brands in fragrance content. If you spend a little time scrolling through PerfumeTok or Fragrantica, you\u2019ll notice users describing scents with evocative and sometimes niche language; they\u2019re asking for scents that feel like drunk texting your ex at 4 a.m. or flying through the sunset on a unicorn. But I\u2019ve witnessed little of the same approach when it comes to classic fragrances, which are ripe for all sorts of fabulous storytelling. Why would you want to smell like a liminal space or a chlorinated hotel pool but not a faded cocktail lounge singer chain-smoking cigarettes in a ratty mink coat, or the most famous movie star of all time (that\u2019d be Marilyn Monroe, a known No. 5 devotee)?<\/p>\n Some of my favorite \u201cold lady\u201d scents gathered together.<\/p>\n <\/span>Kara Nesvig<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Then there\u2019s the constant churn of new:<\/em> new aesthetics, new trends, and countless new fragrances hitting the shelves every week, spurred by social media\u2019s sped-up microtrend cycle (which, mind you, was not how things worked prior to this decade). Our culture is all about chasing the next big thing; trying on a look one day and discarding it the next for something that promises to be bigger, better, more.<\/em> It makes sense that classic scents would get a little lost in the mix and overlooked in favor of something that promises to be more exciting, youthful, and modern.<\/p>\n Whether it\u2019s a fear of growing (or smelling) old, feeling intimidated by the bold fragrance profile of a classic scent, or a preconceived idea about how these fragrances smell, that shouldn\u2019t stop you from experiencing the beauty these so-called \u201cgrandma\u201d perfumes have to offer. To me, appreciating classic perfumery is like sitting down to listen to your elders\u2019 stories and absorb their knowledge, even if it isn\u2019t always the most relevant to your own life. If you\u2019re lucky, you will also be old enough to be a grandma. If you\u2019re a young person who can\u2019t live without Pafums de Marly\u2019s Delina, Ariana Grande\u2019s Cloud, or whatever vanilla scent is trending right now, know that one day someone much younger than you may call those \u201cgrandma perfumes,\u201d solely because you happen to still like them and just happen to be old. That is, if those fragrances wind up having as much lasting power as true classics like No. 5, which endures in part because it was so groundbreaking.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Before Chanel No. 5 launched in 1921, one-note floral scents were the standard; Gabrielle Chanel deviated from that by reportedly asking perfumer Ernest Beaux for something that \u201csmelled like a woman, not a rose.\u201d And without Guerlain\u2019s Shalimar (which also debuted in \u201921), we probably wouldn\u2019t have today\u2019s vanilla scents. Est\u00e9e Lauder launched Youth Dew in 1953 as a bath oil rather than a perfume and gave it a price point women could afford, so they didn\u2019t have to rely on their husbands to gift it to them. It was game-changing; at the time, women weren\u2019t even allowed to open a bank account without a co-signing husband.<\/p>\n I have noticed some tides turning: More TikTok users are opening up to the idea of wearing classic fragrance and sharing their thoughts on why they matter. And that\u2019s how it should be; scent is for everyone and has no age. So I\u2019m calling it high time we did away with downplaying such iconic creations as \u201cgrandma perfumes\u201d and dismissing them solely for being beloved by our elders.<\/p>\n Older women are endlessly cool, and their lived experience is something to strive for, not run away from. Need I point you to Hotel Lobby\u2019s recent Grand Holiday campaign, which starred a troupe of extremely stylish older women, or Batsheva\u2019s 2024 runway show that exclusively featured women over 40 with gray hair? When you\u2019ve been around a while, you\u2019ve experienced more, and that often shows up in defined tastes, tangible self-confidence, and bold fragrance palates to match. Personally, I am desperate to become an iconic grandmother one day\u2014a woman who has lived a lot of life, had a lot of fun, and smelled great for all of it.<\/p>\n Now explore more fragrances:<\/strong><\/p>\n Now, watch Dove Cameron get ready:<\/strong><\/p>\n Follow<\/em> Allure on<\/em>\u00a0Instagram<\/em>and<\/em>\u00a0TikTok, or<\/em>\u00a0subscribe to our newsletter<\/em>to stay up to date on all things beauty.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.allure.com\/story\/classic-fragrance-grandma-perfume”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/media.allure.com\/photos\/698a488e5c62669bdff63d25\/16:9\/w_1280,c_limit\/grandma%20perfume.jpeg”] When I was a little girl in the early \u201990s, I spent a lot of time hanging out in the home of an old woman named Alyce, a distant relative, who was something of a second mother to my mom. I loved padding across her plush cream-colored carpet, admiring her knickknacks, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[52,226],"class_list":["post-1767911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-allure-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1767911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1767911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1767911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1767911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1767911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1767911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/media.allure.com\/photos\/698a4973332edc008965f05a\/master\/w_1600%2Cc_limit\/perfume%2520shelf%2520.jpg\")
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