Oscar de la Renta, Oscar

Sometimes you invent an imaginary woman to wear a fragrance. Sometimes the woman already exists. And sometimes, the woman already exists AND she already wears that fragrance. I know, I know, Ouroboros, history and associations, blah blah blah. But such is the relation between my mother and Oscar. It is written in the stars and in the TJ Maxx inventories.

Just as your mother is probably the single most important woman in your life, her perfume probably struck your child-self as the essence of adulthood and authority. My mother was not a woman to be disobeyed or trifled with. In her glory days, she was like a Nagel print: mass-produced elegance personified, the unabashedly expensive kind, and she threw her class in people's faces like so much prime rib in the face of a starving refugee. But it was the 80s, and she had her own career and was married to an MD (even if he technically worked as a public health administrator). She had paid her dues, in cash (or check if she happened to be at the grocery store), many times over, so it wasn't so unusual to be loudly announced by the clatter of a couple of solid gold bangles, half an inch wide, every time she entered a room. She always looked beautiful, always wore leather shoes and real jewelery. And she owned a fur coat. A good one. In Florida. Her style commanded the respect she deserved as a woman of class, substance, and fortitude. After all, she had come to this country with nothing, put herself through nursing school, and mothered 3 children. She worked 12-hour shifts in the Critical Care Unit of a corrupt hospital in a corrupt healthcare system.

Rooms away, we kids knew when she was finished dressing - that heavy, amber floral, deep and powdery, would fill the bathroom and seethe through the house, occupying every blanket-fortress, penetrating every last pillowcase gas-mask. In the car, it was a massacre. Nobody even had a chance. Eyes watered, throats seized, and any daughterly impulse to cuddle against her pretty silk blouses and coiffed hair was thwarted yards ahead of time.

Now, such aggressive hauteur is out of style, and they sell Oscar and his "don't even think about it" allure at Target. I still don't like it, but I'm used to it by now; I'm much older and bigger, and I can kind of ignore it. However, sometimes, when I'm visiting and there's some event, she'll do her hair and slug me with full-on, floral bitchface, just for old time's sake, and to prove she's still got it.

She does.