The power of scent; an ode to Stella.

Stella by Stella McCartney*

Stella. The name of our family pup who used to sleep beside my cot and run to wake up my mother if I ever awoke in the night. Stella. Also the name of the scent I have worn during some of the most pivotal and also some of the most simple, everyday moments of my life.

Pressing my fingers up to the misty windows of the bus on morning commutes. Moving to new places. Exams. Graduating from University. When I found myself falling in love with books all over again. Wandering around supermarkets, deciding what to make for dinner. So many I love you's. Cuddles with Ralphie. A few painful goodbyes. When nerves built whilst sitting in waiting rooms. Tangled up with the scent of evening rain. Birthdays. Christmases. A couple of plane journeys. To concerts. When making bad decisions, and a few good decisions too. To remind me of home when I haven't been there physically. To remind me of who I am, who I used to be, who I can be when I haven't been present mentally. Sitting on clifftops looking out to sea. Blowing bubbles in countryside villages. Dreaming of where I want to be, and figuring out how to get there.

I have received many bottles as gifts, given almost as many as gifts. And I probably never would have discovered it if it weren't for this space on the internet where I have spent so much of my early twenties. Those important years I have spent learning what it means to be myself.

To me Stella smells like strength, vulnerability, pure unapologetic joy, painful rawness, silliness, a comforting embrace, truth, determination, confusion, a smidge of certainty and the hopeful uncertainty of all the things that are yet to come.

•

What is your favourite fragrance? 

What does it smell like to you? 

•

Follow