Gucci: Mémoire d’une Odeur

Chamomile Tea and Starlit Skies: The Wonder, Warmth and Security of A Fantastical Childhood

The Smashing Pumpkins captured the feeling of this scent in their masterpiece album, "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness." It’s a world filled with grandeur, whimsy, elegance, mysticism, and, of course, just a tinge of melancholy.

Neo-Victorian gold stars and a luminous, laughing moon against the deep blue velvet nightsky (for the album), and for the perfume, an emerald green bottle in the shape of mythical Greek garden pillars. The star-sprinkled box could pass as promo merch for the SP album, all Renaissance magic and surreal beauty.

An otherworldly, dreamlike mix of darkness and light, Gucci’s Mémoire d’une Odeur is an exceedingly romantic fragrance in an exceedingly romantic package. But this isn’t necessarily the romance of romantic love.

The cozy chamomile memory of a caring mother-figure is brought forward here as more of a mythical, golden goddess that feels as powerful as she feels protective. The almond is sublimely sweet and the jasmine exquisitely opulent, conjuring up visions of overflowing gardens.

Its quietness never leans austere, either—there’s lightheartedness at every turn, like the surprising and funny every single time lyric, “I’ll be under the stairs forever,” that Billy Corgan impishly slips in at the very last moment of the fadeout of this song.

Bells, chimes, little sounds of fairy places…lights that only ever glow (never glare), and perfect sensory comfort of every kind: cool enough, warm enough, soft enough, sweet enough.

Beautiful.