‘Nothing,’ said Vladimir Nabokov, ‘revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it’. If smell is the most evocative of all the senses, it seems that Gen Z’s fabled nostalgia for the 1990s has reached new heights. It isn’t just the fashions and music they’re now spending their money on but also the decade’s fragrances.
Sales of 90s classics like ‘Joop! Homme’ and ‘CK One’ have rocketed and there has, over the last month, been a 228 per cent increase in sales of Calvin Klein’s ‘Eternity for Men’. But what if Generation Z were able simply to follow their noses and return to the 1990s themselves? Would the era smell of sandalwood and bergamot or something a great deal less beguiling?
Making a call outside your house means using a phone box that stinks of old cigarettes and last week’s urine
There’s much they’ll find a trial, not least communications.
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