In the summer of 2013 while on a day trip in Antwerp with my dear friend Anna, I came across the original collection of Maison Martin Margiela’s REPLICA scents. As we tried Beach Walk, Flower Market and Funfair Evening, Margiela’s little curiosity shop apothecary jars transported me to places past and gorgeous VSCO Cam filtered memories. The scents were intended to be “reproduction[s] of familiar scents and moments of varying locations and periods.” I fell in love with all three scents, each for a different reason.

Funfair Evening was meant to conjure up a Santa Monica carnival in 1994 and all the sweet delight involved. The composition was of petitgrain, sweet apple, pear ester, star anise, neroli, Moroccan rose, tuberose, Egyptian orange blossom, Ambrox, white musk, Tahitian vanilla and caramel. For me sticky, sugary tones in Funfair Evening recalled memories of sharing cotton candy at the Hamptons Summer Carnival with my friend Erin, and driving in her dad’s red vintage convertible.
Beach Walk was meant to evoke sun-kissed skin on the Corsican Beach of Calvi in 1972. So fresh with notes of bergamot, coconut milk, lemon, lang lang  pink pepper, heliotrope, cederwood and musk. Now, it makes me recall beautiful days lazing around and kissing in the sun and surf of Sayulita.

“I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald

The collection launched in 2012 and still wasn’t stateside by that summer of 2013 and as I flew back to the US I kicked myself for not purchasing at least one of the fragrances. Flash forward to around Christmas time when my friend Anna surprised me by sending me a bottle of Beach Walk. She couldn’t remember which one I liked best and it’s quite funny she chose Beach Walk, given my nature. I’m a summer baby, I bask in the sun. The salt-air, the humidity, I glow. On a beach, I am in my element. Those are my sea shells that I actually have around the house!

Now available at retailers stateside — with new men and women’s scents — I’m still on my first bottle that Anna sent over. During these last, waning days of summer is when I pull it out most (and when I returned from Sayulita to cold New York this past winter). If only these beach days could last forever.
#EndlessSummer

Fellas, FYI, Jazz Club, one of the men’s fragrance drives me crazy. Memories of heady cocktails and cigars in a Brooklyn Jazz Club in 2013… oh my! 😉