Longevity.

'what do i wear to bed? why, chanel number 5, of course.' 

Marilyn Monroe. 

I can pinpoint the exact moment that i fell in love with fashion. I was 7 years old, and my impossibly glamorous aunt used to flit into my bedroom and wake us up gently with a kiss and the brush of a fringe from the forehead on her way back from the airport. The smell of lingering chanel number 5, of musk and glamour and secrets, would signal a time of intense happiness to come as she would open her suitcases and reveal the latest treasures she had brought back for us.

Russian dolls whose smallest section was no bigger than the nail on my pinky, hand painted in St Petersburg. Silver tins of Indian spices and jars full of spindly red saffron for my mum. My brothers received chunky cable knit jumpers in bracing colours of bottle green from the isle of Skye. There were plenty of trinkets, charms for bracelets and blocks of chocolate that all tasted different depending on which country they were from (needless to say the squares from Bruges had a distinctly lovely taste). 

And on top of this there was always the best gift of all, a glimpse into her suitcase and what treasures there were for a jet-setting glamour girl. My sister and I would crowd around and peek at the silk shirts, the shoes in their velveteen shoe bags, the vanity case with its myriad of bottles and tubes, beautiful, forbidden things that we (in our patterned leggings and tunic dresses) could only dream about. And there was this smell of chanel number 5 wafting out temptingly. For me it was this moment when fashion, though of course i had no idea what fashion yet, first snuck its way into my heart. 

It would be many years before i actually wore chanel number 5 for the first time myself. It was my first school dance, and after picking out a smock dress and a pair of kitten heels (i was 14 after all) i was ready to spend a few hours in the arms of some immature schoolboy. As i was walking out the door Fleur, yes, her name is Fleur (could you be anymore fabulous!), spritzed me liberally with chanel number 5. There is a photo of me leaving the house with the biggest smile on my face, suddenly it was me who was the jet-setting glamazon with silk shirts and a shoe bag for all of my shoes. I stood up straighter, my grin was wider, my dreams were bigger. Needless to say Chanel Number 5 didn't go down very well with the boys at the dance, but then, my tastes have always run to things older and more mature.

I am constantly amazed by the transformative power of perfume. One of my favourite parts of Vogue UK at the moment is the column written by Sophie Dahl about perfume and scent with different themes. Sometimes she writes about perfumes for summer, other times its updates on a modern classic, this month it was asking what gives a perfume longevity. I've cycled through scents throughout my, admittedly, short existence so far, sometimes by fad, sometimes through the misguided belief that it would make a difference (no matter how lovely it is Miss Dior Cherie is not the scent for me, sadly), sometimes because i was sucked in by beautiful packaging and ad campaigns. The one bottle that always stays on the shelf is Chanel Number 5. Fleur gave it to me for my 16th birthday. 

 I use it sparingly, a few drops at Fleur's wedding to her Scottish husband at the Prestonfield hotel surrounded by peacocks and powdery white snow. A few drops every day I was in Paris, for a few cinderella hours I could be an ingenue with messy hair and a bag full of secrets. A few drops on my 18th birthday when champagne dreams became reality and we danced the night away. 

Longevity, from all things fashion but especially from perfume, comes from its ability to transform you, when you wear perfume it shouldn't just make you smell nice, that's what a perfume does. What a perfume is, is freedom. It's fantasy. Without perfume a girl looks nice. With perfume, a girl becomes a woman. Constrictions of wealth and race and culture and ideas don't exist. Idealisation it may be, but in my experience this has all been true. When i wear chanel number 5 suddenly i am no longer a silly, average girl. Perhaps it is a silly, average thing to believe, but perfume gives you power. Everything truly marvelous i have every done in my life i have done whilst wearing perfume. And i can remember them all, first kiss wearing stella by stella, the time my sister and I just got in the car and drove one day, aimlessly wandering for a whole weekend drinking wine out of the bottle and sleeping under the stars in daisy by marc jacobs, Dux of my school with a spritz of opium YSL. 

Sometimes i wonder if I am doing anything with my life. I seem to meander through each day with little or no purpose, yes i want to be a writer but what am i doing about it? At the moment I feel like i'm treading water in all aspects of my life. I just float, i'm not sinking, but i'm not swimming either. But those days when i stride out of the house in some powerful scent i seem more purposeful, everything seems to go quicker, i seem to be doing things.

And even if that is just an illusion, placebo effect, surface change, i don't care. I choose blissful ignorance over knowledgeable despair. 

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