Take Me Back: Maison Margiela’s Memory-Making Scents
A fragrance brand to feed your nostalgia, team Liberty pen an ode to the perfume that transports them to one of their most beloved memories
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Take Me Back: Maison Margiela’s Memory-Making Scents
A fragrance brand to feed your nostalgia, team Liberty pen an ode to the perfume that transports them to one of their most beloved memories
By: Shannon Peter
The ability for a fragrance to transport you back to a particular time, place or feeling may feel like magic, but really, it’s all science.
When a smell enters the nostrils, some 450 nasal receptors start pinging off signals to the brain. Should a familiar scent hit the olfactory bulb, it shoots messages around the limbic system, stimulating the areas of our brain associated with memory and emotion. It’s why the scent of fresh, powdery laundry might make you feel cosseted, as it transports you back to the loving embrace of your family home. Or why notes of jasmine and frangipani spark flashbacks to that holiday in some far flung land.
Innate though this connection may be, few fragrance brands manage to hijack this system quite like Maison Margiela, and its wildly popular REPLICA Collection. Blends made for evoking old memories – and crafting new ones – each scent is (as the name would suggest) an olfactory replica of a common, comforting experience, whether it’s a long soak in a froth-filled tub, the first bite of a delicious French cake or that odd sense of unbridled relief after a heavy downpour.
However you like your signature scent to make you feel, there’s a Maison Margiela fragrance for that. Here, team Liberty discover their own…
REPLICA Jazz Club
As remembered by Harriet Brown, acting content editor
Late night in an early 2010s University town, and far from the pulsing beats and flashing dancefloors of the usual student haunts, I find myself squeezing up shabby, creaking staircase to the promise of something just a little… different.
There are rickety chairs crammed around tiny tables, wobbling on uneven floorboards, lit by the customary glow of tabletop tealights. A four-piece band is silhouetted against the window, playing accompanied by the murmur of conversation from groups of friends, couples and the occasional student interloper (that’s me) sipping on flinchingly-strong cocktails.
This tiny blues bar in the midlands is where Margiela’s Jazz Club transports me. Some 1,000 miles from Margiela’s own suggestion of Brooklyn, 2013, and perhaps even further distant thanks to sticky floors and student budgets.
But one spritz of Jazz Club and I’m back clambering up a very specific spiral staircase somewhere in 2012.
The cocktail of heady sweetness, calm insouciance, tobacco-tinged rebellion and easy sophistication had me, when I was barely grazing adulthood, completely rapt, and the same goes for this fragrance today. Pure, intoxicating nostalgia: warm, welcoming and just a little mysterious.
REPLICA Beach Walk
As remembered by Georgia Graham, content consultant
In 1997, a columnist called Mary Schmich wrote an essay for the Chicago Tribune. It contained life advice for a young reader, and began with the words: “If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.” The piece was later adapted by Australian filmmaker Baz Luhrmann into a song called “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)”, which I remember hearing around the age of 9 or 10. It was played as part of an assembly at my school in Australia, where it served as both literal and metaphorical caution for its young audience.
My parents had recently decamped from the English countryside to Sydney, where we’d traded in our wooly jumpers and wellies for swimsuits and sunscreen. The latter was a daily fixture, slathered onto our sunless British limbs by my mum every morning.
The scent always takes me there, to the anticipation of an afternoon at the beach, splashing in and out of the sea before mum wrestled us back for another liberal application.
When I smell Margiela’s creamy, coconutty ‘Beach Walk’, I’m immediately transported back to those years. The warm, carefree blend of youth, freedom, and sunshine. And the start of a sunscreen habit that has (thankfully) lasted a lifetime.
REPLICA By the Fireplace
As remembered by Shannon Peter, content editor
Scotland is my happy place, and I’ve been visiting the same cabin on the edge of Loch Lomond every October since I was a child. It’s where Autumn feels more like Autumn. And while my annual week-long visit always skips by far too fast, I’ve found a way to extend its magic all throughout the year: REPLICA By the Fireplace.
Let me take you there. Imagine curling up on the sofa, glass of red in hand, wrapped in a fuzzy tartan blanket. In front of you, the fire gently crackles, its warmth brushing up against your cheeks, while its flames provide a suitably cosy glow. Catch a waft of By the Fireplace, and you’d be forgiven for thinking you were right there with me.
It's a warm, comforting blend of woody, ambery notes with a hint of smoke.
There’s vanilla in there too, and a smooth cashmere note, with clove and pink pepper for nose-tickling spice and a bright orange flower absolu to temper the headiness. Sure, its perfumer might have had an apres ski evening in Chamonix back in 1971 in mind when they curated it, but for me – it is an evening in Scotland through and through.
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Maison Margiela
Replica Autumn Vibes Eau de Toilette 30ml
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(untitled) Eau de Parfum 100ml
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Replica Flying Eau de Parfum 100ml
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Replica Under the Stars Eau de Toilette 30ml
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Replica From the Garden Eau de Toilette 30ml
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Maison Margiela
Replica Sailing Day Eau de Toilette 30ml
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Replica On a Date Eau de Toilette 100ml
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Replica When the Rain Stops Eau de Toilette 100ml
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Replica Bubble Bath Eau de Toilette 30ml
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