10 years ago
Some familiar olfactory memories there, Omni. In particular, the shoe polish and floor wax aromas resonate with me. Polishing our shoes was a ritual my sister and I shared with our father when we were of school age. Funnily enough, we preferred Kiwi polish to the Nugget, ox blood colour for my father's one pair of Julius Marlow work shoes and black for the Clark's school ones. We kept everything in an old Globite school case.
We also had an old oak dining table that had belonged to my father's parents and it was my job to periodically wax and polish it with the Johnsons paste wax in the round yellow tin.
I don't think it's nostalgia, but I do love certain perfumes that have those birch tar, turpenic and petrochemical aromas (e.g. Tauer's "No. 03 - Lonestar Memories", "Cuir de Russie" and even "Memoir Woman" seems to have this furniture polish opening).
As for Tweed and Cachet, I have no memory of how they smelled, just the corny ads. "Aren't you wearing Tweed?" he murmurs as he sleazily sidles up to smell a woman's neck. I always wondered about the authenticity of Prince Matchabelli but, even as a child, I suspected he was bogus royalty. The name evoked images of Barbara Eden in I Dream of Genie, wearing a costume of faux Arabian exotica and a perfume made by a prince to "match ya belly!". Now I think about it, the name actually sounds more Italian than Middle Eastern; perhaps he was the titled heir to a crumbling estate and to make ends meet turned to creating perfumes for the housewives of the early 70s?