Perhaps this scenario is familiar: You express enthusiasm for a fragrance, and a friend notes — maybe with a little smugness — that she doesn’t wear perfume. She’d rather smell “fresh and clean.”
Little does she know that the fresh and clean smell she likes so much is perfume. The bar of soap in her shower, the box of laundry detergent she bought last weekend, the spot remover she uses when kitty has an accident — it’s all scented and calculated to smell clean. These products define and perpetuate our idea of “clean.”
Soap? Musk and orange blossom practically define “soapy” these days, although the musk could also be hopped up with rose, linden, or grape-sweet lavender. Citrus, especially orange, often registers as clean. Pine smells clean, too. Think of Pinesol or the tree-shaped air fresheners dangling from so many rear view mirrors. Thanks to the calone explosion in the 1990s, the combination of ozone, melon, and cucumber often read as rain fresh. Air fresheners have ruined lilac for me for good. And then there’s powdery clean…
