The Scent of My Mother

Beauty Editor Margaux Anbouba fragrance explores the power of and memory.

- Margaux Anbouba

My mother, Kimberly, loved white florals: freckled limbs moisturized with plumeria body lotion, rooms filled with Pottery Barn furniture and Madonna lilies, and pulse points misted with her signature tuberose perfume before she walked out the door.

When she died of cancer in 2011, the wake was filled with her favorite flowers, giving me a decade-long aversion to the scents she loved so much. Until recently, I was still haunted by white florals-I would give away bouquets with lilies because the smell made me nauseous. At the time of her death, I was a naïve 21-year-old who assumed the memories of my mother would be permanently etched into my brain. The image of her long nails always painted the same shade of OPI red, the sound of her guffaw-ish laugh, even the way she said my name in her sorta-Southern drawl, are all now fading as I grow older. In a panic, I scoured the internet to find a fix.