Today I realized I had all the ingredients to recreate Swistle’s High School Scent, and so on impulse I recreated it. I washed my hair with Pert Plus, and then I used Suave baby-powder-scented deodorant and Charlie perfume. Maybe it was only the seasonal spring pollen, but two of my co-workers sneezed near me. Just one sneeze each, which is inconclusive—but still, in the future I will save Swistle’s High School Scent for non-working days. I am sentimentally and enduringly fond of Charlie, but it is an aldehyde. I am not 100% sure I am using that word correctly. Aldehyde is a word I have gradually become familiar with from perfume reviews, and to my semi-understanding it refers to that “date-night perfume” element of 1970s perfumes, which non-enjoyers refer to as “nostril-scorching.” I like to have my nostrils lightly scorched by it, and I appreciate the way I can still smell the perfume at 6:30 p.m. after applying it at 6:30 a.m.—but, again from perfume reviews, I am aware of the many, many, many people who don’t appreciate these things (NO NEED TO ADD MORE VOICES TO THE CHORUS, I HAVE SAID I AM AWARE) (NO SERIOUSLY).
Oh! Also this morning, completely unrelated: a slightly alarming thing. I dried off after my shower, and as I hung up my towel I saw streaks of blood on it. My first thought was that this might be one of the highly irregular periods of The Glorious Transition, but no. I had several other thoughts (shaving injury? etc.), checked them; also no. I stood in front of the full-length mirror and examined the corpus entire: no blood! Baffled, I went on to the next step of my routine, which is drying out the ears and nose—and it turned out my nose was bleeding.
…This story was not anywhere NEAR as dramatic in the telling as it was in the experiencing. Honestly it had the twang of true horror. Ideally blood should not be coming from anywhere, but EVEN LESS should it be coming from NOWHERE APPARENT. Is it coming from…THE WALLS?? A GHOST?? SOMETHING ATTACHED TO THE CEILING?????
I have selected the tulips winner, and also a second tulips winner because I felt like it and there was enough in the Swistle Ad Revenue fund, and I have emailed them for their addresses. If you were not one of the winners, may I suggest you order some tulips for yourself or a friend/relative tomorrow morning, if funds permit? 🌷🌷🌷 They restock at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern time. It is really so fun.
Also I wish to know: what was your High School Scent Combination?
I am deeply fascinated by your reference to perfume reviews. How can I figure out from reviews what perfumes I will like by the words they use? I can tell by the term nostril soorching that I will not be a fan of Charlie but how can I learn more?
SO. For ME, anyway, how it works is that at first none of it means anything to me, and also I get a little irritated by snobby-sounding remarks (someone saying something smells like “a drugstore perfume”). Then, gradually, by looking up perfumes I’ve tried and liked, and perfumes I’ve tried and disliked, I start to see patterns. I notice that if it mentions patchouli, musk, white florals, berry, fruity—I tend not to like it (though there are exceptions, especially if those are smaller notes); and that if it mentions bergamot, fresh green, oud, spicy, tea, tobacco, anise, unisex, those tend to be better bets (though again, many exceptions). Mostly I use the reviews to find companionship in disappointment and suggested fixes, like when Jo Malone had a delightful new one called Ginger Biscuit, and the scent lasted about five minutes, and it was very satisfying to read all the reviews saying the same thing (though of course MADDENING to see the reviews saying it lasted all day), and lots of people were mentioning other similar perfumes that were less disappointing.
Herbal Essences shampoo for sure.
I would really like them to produce a shampoo with the original Herbal Essence scent! I loved that scent.
Does the original no longer exist? I’ve wondered and would be all about it if it’s out there.
I did think for a minute you were gonna find out you had grabbed a towel that already had blood on it!
The only thing worse than your own mystery blood would be somebody else’s!
Although a stranger’s mystery blood would be way worse than a family member’s in my opinion….
I’ve never smelled Charlie perfume but I vaguely remember being enchanted by the commercials. My boyfriend once mentioned how my hair smelled when I first met him which I thought was impossibly romantic. I also had a weird nosebleed yesterday, which I know is NOT that huge a coincidence and this is making me giggle because of all the ‘that is not a huge coincidence at all, actually’ conversations I have heard and held recently.
I wake up with blood in my nose a couple of times a month. I should track it like my period because I haven’t figured out why it’s happening yet. I’m assuming it’s because perimenopause is a bitch that dries up everything. My skin just eats moisturizer like candy.
I won’t bag on Charlie but it is a perfume my mom used to wear; our single bathroom smelled like Charlie and Jean Nate and Avon lipsticks when I was growing up.
The first perfume I remember requesting and wearing in HS was Avon’s Facets. Reading the scent notes now, that is a lot of notes. Late 80s – early 90s was an interesting time period: over the top to the point of satire 80s-ness mixed with a growing anti-80s backlash that would become the actual 90s. Facets was no CKOne is I guess what I’m saying. I probably rocked Facets with Secret deoderant and Finesse shampoo. I’m sure I smelled delightful.
Oh!! When I used Finesse, I got like two compliments about how nice I smelled—which is not a large number, but it’s two more compliments than I USUALLY get about how I smell, so it was memorable!
Finesse & Vidal Sassoon (ooo la la? Or was that just the jeans?) are the scents I’ve been randomly complimented on over the years. ‘What perfume are you wearing’ is an awkward question to answer when you aren’t actually wearing any.
Ooooh. This was fun to think about! I’m not a user of perfume, but I loved Bath and Body works products in high school. The Freesia scent was my favorite. The mention of Pert and Finesse here brought me back to high school.
I came to say Love’s baby soft was my high school scent – forgot about shampoo then saw Finesse and that was defiantly my go to.
CHARLIE!!! I haven’t thought of that for years. I also wore it, as well as some kind of perfume that I’m sure doesn’t exist anymore, called Trouble. “Smells like Trouble!” wow, weird advertising.
I would say my high school scent was Salon Selectives hair products and Vanilla Fields perfume. Sometimes for Christmas, in my late teens, I’d get a gift pack of Alfred Sung perfume and products, and I loved those too – but that was a special occasion thing, I mostly wore Vanilla Fields.
Hmmm, I think Finesse or Salon Selectives. Plus Target-brand aerosol hairspray. I always wanted Liz Claiborne perfume, but it was way too expensive for me at the time. I think I used Jontue? And in warmer weather, Jean Nate after-bath splash. In college, I got into Cassini perfume (still have the bottle) and Clinique scents.
I don’t think I’ve ever smelled Charlie! My high school perfumes were Dream by Gap, Exclamation, and Tribe. Good times. My best friend wore Grass by Gap and I loooooooved it so much. I would wear it today if I could.
Oh my word, Grass by Gap! That unlocked some memories for me :) I wore Om by Gap during my 90s high school years. I remember buying it on a shopping trip to the only “nearby” mall (a 2 hour drive from our small town).
I also loved Om by Gap!!! I had the little metal travel spray in my purse ALWAYS
YES! I had Grass by Gap and I loved it sooooo much. Then I moved on to Light Blue by Calvin Klein in my later teen years. And herbal essences shampoo later, Body Shop shampoo before then. (I was obsessed with true smell of Ice Blue but it was totally wrong for my hair type so I just used to sniff my stepmom’s bottle of it, ha.)
Body Shop! I loved their products. I can’t recall all the scents of the ones I liked. However, the lip balm in the little jar with the screw cap was a favorite.
OMG the Gap scents! Dream was the popular one, my favorite was Sunshine, which was citrusy and hard to find for some reason. That and Bath and Bodyworks Grapefruit.
I wonder if there’s some sort of Charlie Divide between those of us who are old enough to have worn it and those of you young enough to associate it with your moms.
My high school shampoo/conditioner were Faberge Organics with Wheat Germ Oil and Honey. I have no idea why this seemed like a sound marketing campaign, and it’s not why I bought it. I bought it because it went on sale all the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgDxWNV4wWY
I wore Scoundrel, I guess because Joan Rivers touting a lack of agency seemed hot to me?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSAah2WyZ-A
It has a lot in common with other perfumes I like: Aldehydes! Cedar, oakmoss, bergamot
https://www.fragrantica.com/perfume/Revlon/Scoundrel-14143.html
I laughed, I giggled and I snorted over your horror of bleeding from.. nowhere? That was so easy to envision and so well written!
High school/college: Sephora Creme Caramel! A friend visited France and brought me back a little bottle of it (and also two other scents which I was less excited about – a mint one and an apple one?). A fragrance I was not allergic to! There was also a tangerine-mango body spray. Both have been discontinued, sigh. That said, I generally only added scent on special occasions, so Shampoo/Conditioner Of The Month (Suave, V05, or Herbal Essences Pink Bottle) were more generally my smell.
Younger-high-school featured a custom oil-based perfume from a shop in the mall; I think it had some rose notes but I don’t remember what else…
Did anyone else use that apricot face scrub? Retrospectively, wow that was excessively abrasive. But it, too, smelled good…
The St. Ives face scrub!!!! Yes!!!
I’ve always liked Pantene, and I started using that in the early 1990’s. My perfume of choice in high school was Amarige by Givenchy. It is a white floral bomb. My husband still likes it on me, so I do wear it occasionally. Men of my age (45/46) have been known to tell me that I smell like their high school girlfriend when I wear it, so I’m going to assume it was pretty popular in the 90’s.
My personal current favorites are Flowerbomb by Victor & Rolf and Fucking Fabulous by Tom Ford. I had a bottle of J’Adore Dior and it was awful on me. One of my daughters took it, and it’s fantastic on her. Perfumes are so weird sometimes.
I wear Flowerbomb! I’m not usually a perfume person but I got a little sample bottle in with a clothing order and I liked it so much my husband bought me a full bottle.
I have been mourning the disappearance of Sinan, and one day a coworker smelled just like Sinan. I was so excited! I asked what it was, bought some, and . . . I smelled like I’d crawled out of a dumpster. SO disappointing.
(I smelled like Faberge Organics with Wheat Germ Oil and Honey Shampoo, plus Scoundrel, as flogged by Joan Collins, who I am sure never wore it)
For everyone who can’t find something that smells like a disappeared perfume, I bring you Fragrantica:
https://www.fragrantica.com/
Agree shampoo/conditioner and Chloe or Lauren perfume. Also Impulse (when someone you don’t know suddenly gives you flowers) body spray, especially the baby powder scented one…
OMG, I forgot about Impulse!
And I think I had a sample of Lauren, too
This somehow reminds me of an early dating experience with JB. I asked him what shampoo he used: “Pert.” Oh, and what do you wash your face with? “….Pert.” It was probably his laundry detergent too.
Also have had the Mystery Blood Freakout, always a shaving thing where I have somehow left a trail of blood all OVER the place from a single molecule-size wound near my ankle.
STEALTH ANKLE WOUND WAS MY SECOND SUSPECT
The Bitts high school scent was Liz Claiborne perfume, Salon Selectives shampoo & conditioner, and Secret baby powder deodorant.
Yes – Salon Selectives! My Mom would only buy Suave. I had to use my babysitting money and buy my own Salon Selectives hairspray.
Salon Selectives here, too! Though my mom’s sketchy-ass bf moved in and I was forced to use Suave. And threw a fit about it – as an angsty teen with a new man in the house is likely to do – and promptly was told that if I thought I had it so bad I should go live with my dad. Which I did. Which led to a kind of crazy teen life. Anyhoo.
I can’t get beyond the fact that you dry your nose. Ears I get. I don’t think I’ve ever dried my nose. I guess I always blow my nose almost immediately after getting out of the shower, so maybe that does the trick?
Same when I pictured using a Qtip, but then I decided she probably meant blowing her nose, which I also do.
I didn’t wear perfume in HS regularly because I went to an all girls school and what was the point (this is also why I didn’t wear makeup, but I digress). However, I loved the smell of Salon Selectives. If my hair wasn’t so fussy I’d still use it today. It takes me back!
Unrelatedly, Spring = bloody nose season for me because I have to take Claratin in order to survive early blooming spring trees, but it dries my nose out badly and then the slightest touch makes me nose bleed. I hate allergies…
For MONTHS I have had a little scabby thing inside my left nostril that seems to crack open randomly, and bleeds, but I’m on blood thinners so it looks apocalyptic every time.
I didn’t have a signature scent, but this post made me think of my best friend in high school, who wore Calgon Body Mist in Hawaiian Ginger. I just googled and the sight of the bottle made me smile.
Salon Selectives shampoo for sure.
Colors de Benetton, Liz Claiborne (in the triangle bottle!) and I got a big gift set of Estée Lauder perfumes but I cannot remember the scents that l liked. I took a fun trip on a perfume website but nothing rang a bell.
I went to high school in the 70’s, so my answers will skew older. I wore Love’s Baby Soft, Oh! de London (loved the striped bottle) and for getting fancy, Ambush or Anais Anais. Herbal Essence for my hair. And blue and green eye shadow (not at the same time, but still). My more daring friends used colored mascaras.
Oh I remember the sheer THRILL of colored mascaras. I wore PURPLE mascara (to match my PURPLE dress) to prom!
Blue mascara here, along with blue eye shadow! #childofthe80s
My high school scent was a mixture of pot & cigarettes!
Also chlorine because I usually swam every day.
For inside the nose crusty blobs try using a saline spray. I find a toot or two in the morning seems to help.
Haha! Mine too, but shampoo was Old Spice original. I much preferred man smells. Then came patchouli and musk oils, so I kinda stunk people away – which was quite probably the idea.
My high school scent was LouLou by Cacharel. I only wore perfume occasionally then, and never nowadays. Shampoo was Pantene.
Oh! Remember Sunshine Harvest Shampoo, it was fruity, fruity. I smelled like a big raspberry. Also the one with a cap that was a lemon?
Annoyingly, I cannot remember what perfume I wore in high school, but I suspect it was Coty Wild Musk for a while. And then probably a Body Shop perfume oil in either Vanilla or Satsuma (or sometimes both because then I smelled like a creamsicle and I enjoyed that).
I have always enjoyed perfumes with citrus, vanilla, sandalwood, cedar. Nothing floral, generally, as it gives me a headache. (Though there are exceptions because I wore Carolina Herrera’s 212 perfume for years during grad school – and it’s a floral, “a blend of light florals, musky undertones, soft powdery flowers as well as white flower notes of gardenia, jasmine, and lily of the valley”. In general, I prefer men’s cologne to women’s perfume because it tends to lack the floral aspect.
For shampoo, I think we mostly used Herbal Essences or Pantene. Every now and again, my mom would buy this shampoo and conditioner and I would really love to smell it again. I loved it so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gee,_Your_Hair_Smells_Terrific
The Vermont Country Store has Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific shampoo and conditioner!
Estee Lauder’s White Linen is one I remember from ‘back in the day’ although it might have been post-high school (I don’t think we were sophisticated enough for perfume). Shampoo though – the arrival of APPLE-scented shampoo was a revelation, and was followed soon after by strawberry. We must have smelled like a fruit salad. The strawberry one smelled so good I tasted it. Unsurprisingly it tasted like soap…
Yes to apple shampoo! My aunt would get us Apple Pectin shampoo, which I don’t think we could find in stores. I wonder if they still make it! Perfume was SO MUCH Body Fantasies peach scented body spray, which I stole from my sister, who was in middle school. I totally smelled like a fruit salad, too. Don’t get me started on the Sun Ripened Raspberry lotion from Bath and Bodyworks…
I don’t remember HS perfume, but I do remember junior high! Sunflowers by Elizabeth Arden. I can almost recall the scent now… some 30+ years later, and I do remember just sniffing and sniffing the bottle because I thought it smelled SO GOOD.
I’m in Australia, and went to high school in the 80s, and didn’t have anything fancier than Impulse (from the supermarket) until university. However what I did have was Seventeen magazine. Their 1980s advertising had an absolute HOLD on me. Seeing you all talking about Love Baby Soft, Jean Nate, Gap, Faberge, Charlie… I’m imagining you all in those ads!! (Almost none of that was available here then)
Freeman’s Papaya hairspray, Body Shop Vanilla and Loulou by Cacheral – every once in awhile I’d steal a squirt of my mom’s Opium which I thought was so scandalous…
I just wanted to chime in- I didn’t really wear a scent but every boy I knew wore Drakkar Noir. I even got a love letter drenched in the stuff.
YESSSS Drakkar Noir. It must have had the most effective advertising campaign known to man-literally-man. So many boys wore it, and it did not hit my nose nicely AT ALL.
Ooo taking me back and YES. I wonder if every boy in the America wore that at one point?
I wore Obsession, because it reminded me of my boyfriend. Lordy.
I think my shampoo as a teenager was Suave or Pert, I do remember using Prell, whatever my Mom bought us. Nothing fancy, but I loved the smell of Prell (I don’t think it exists anymore). Never wore any scent and even use unscented deoderant due to allergies. Suave body wash for me (inexpensive and I like the smell), but I do tend to go for the more expensive shampoos now since I dye my hair (to cover the grey). I didn’t have a boyfriend until I was 18 (my husband) and I don’t think he really cared as long as I smelled clean (haha, same now).
Weirder than the Mystery Blood is the Mystery Cut. I was brushing my teeth with just a regular toothbrush once and suddenly got a sharp pain in the tip of my finger that caused me to cast my toothbrush into the sink. Upon investigation I found a slit across the pad of my finger deep enough to draw blood. I had no sensation of cutting myself until I was brushing my teeth, but I guess maybe I nicked it on something sharp just before that somehow and then the rubbing of the toothbrush handle on it actually made it register? To this day I have not figured out exactly what happened.
I have been going about my day and just glanced down and found random bleeding injuries from time-to-time, but the finger toothbrush cut was the oddest.
Not in the least bit related (there’s always one), BUT . . . Because of you, I have absolutely beautiful tulips in my home. Thanks so much for introducing me to their site. I ordered first for me (duh) (quality control), then I ordered some for a friend who really needs a spring pick me up.
No idea how long their season lasts, but I hope to be able to order more. Happy, contented sigh.
Oh I am SO glad. <3
P.S. WHAT COLORS DID YOU GET??
I received a light cream color with pink tips and also red. So lovely.
Especially because I have been unable to grow them here. In case you don’t manage to keep the ramblings of your many, many readers straight, I am the one sharing my small farm with way too many deer, turkeys and assorted other critters.
Are your daffodils blooming?
Oh, what a GOOD COMBINATION!!
I have a few little daffodil leaves just starting to poke up now—but most of the ones we planted a couple years ago have inexplicably failed to sprout. We planted, like, 50, and I think we have 3 or 4 coming up. WHERE ARE THEY?? They can’t have been eaten!!