The Sweet Smell of Youth — Love’s Baby Soft
Before the days of Colors by benetton, before Liz Claiborne, and waaay before the very mature, very overpowering Obsession obsession, pre-teen girls of the 80s everywhere were spritzing this on their wrists and behind their ears: Love’s Baby Soft was the “it” fragrance to have sitting atop your dresser – it smelled (and still smells) like . . . well . . . youth. The powdery and pretty scent came in a rounded pink bottle with a big...
What a Splash! Jean Nate’
By Lori Ferraro What’s black and yellow, huge and plastic, with a cap the size of a doorknob? Jean Nate’ after bath splash, of course! I would make excuses to take a shower in my parent’s bathroom, because my mom had a big bottle of the yellow stuff in there. I admired the beautiful women in the commercials who would splash handfuls of that yellow liquid on themselves. They looked so energized and enthused! And they did things like...
Scent of the 80s
By Lori Ferraro Like everything else in the 80s, perfume was also little overboard – at least on this teenage girl it was. Subtlety was not my middle name and a little of anything never seemed to be enough…my signature scent was no exception. Walk down the halls of any high school around 1987 and along with the overpowering manly stink of Polo and Drakkar on the guys you would find a sweet, musky mixture of these legendary...
A Love Letter to a Big Stinker: Polo Cologne
The other day while on my lunch break downtown, I got caught behind a man wearing a cloud of fragrance that sent me screaming back to the eighth grade. This man had apparently just bathed in a bathtub of Polo cologne, and I was hopelessly left in his wake. At first I coughed – and then I smiled, altering my route to follow him an extra block – no joke. There are few things in life as powerful as a sense memory, and smells rank...
Making Scents of It All in the 80s
We loved designer fragrances in the 1980s! Remember, this was before every starlet and pop singer put her name on her own special concoction; we left it to designers to work their magic and celebrities to sell it. One little whiff would let us know if you were team Gloria or team Giorgio, or even a brazen Enjoli girl. Check out these great vintage perfume commercials of the 80s. All sell a slightly different version of fabulous,...
