LUCID MEMORIES

Flickr//ValeriaDadDetta.

My mum smells like a combination of Dolce & Gabbana perfume and gardenias. Whenever the year approaches it's summery, floral end (northern hemispherites, this is when you plunge your face in the snow), I often think of my mother wafting through our old house on balmy afternoons in a haze of delicate scent. When I was just a girl smearing my mouth with Lip Smackers, and blindly attempting to channel Alicia Silverstone in Clueless with  knee high socks and tweed two pieces, my mother was spritzing herself with Issey Miyake and draping silk kimonos around her shoulders. My favourite past time was sneaking into my parents bedroom, opening the big blue doors to her wardrobe, and feasting my eyes on the treasures within. Swathes of chiffon, Ferragamo sandals, giant belts, shoulder pads, boxy bags with red lining - the multitude of possible outfits was at once overwhelming and exciting. I never left that room without donning her red velvet hat, clumsily applying deep maroon lipstick, and dancing around the bed pretending I was a movie star from the 1920's. On the afternoons my older sister was out with her gang of cool friends and I was stuck at home writing in my journal and pretending to be Pocahontas, I would make the trip up to her room, the attic, and play dress ups (Lucy, if you're reading this, I apologise). Her clothes, encased in a wardrobe with big shutter doors, represented the best of the 90's. Doc Martens, Hypercolour t-shirts, chains and crosses, black lace tops and tartan mini-dresses, all smelling like Impulse deodorant and rebellion. I would return to my small room, slide the mirrored door to my modest wardrobe open and hope that, one day, I would own my own set of garments that would elicit sneaky dress up sessions and doe-eyed admiration, and smell like something more glamorous and sexy than soap and the school yard. 

I was never the cool kid. I always asked my sister to pick out my outfits (I bribed her with dollar coins and chores). I wanted to be just as aloof and cool as her. Yet I was always torn between looking like a Nirvana worshipping teen, all black lipstick and denim cut off jackets, or a product of my beautiful mother - peachy keen, tied together, ready for ballet class. It hasn't changed, even now. I can never settle on being the girly girl in creamy box pleated skirts, or the goth in a long black silhouette. I guess my memories of clothes and scent have shaped my own idea of what happens when you wake up each day and decide what to wear. I'm still playing dress ups, but this time with my own clothes, in my own big wardrobe, with my own perfume. And not a Lip Smacker or Impulse bottle in sight.