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When I was sixteen, I spent a summer in Malawi, Africa, helping deliver school supplies to rural villages through an AIDS orphans relief program. Because we had to carry the supplies on foot to areas without roads, I packed as lightly as possible: a sleeping bag, three skirts and shirts, hiking boots, a water bottle and one little blue bar of soap.

That soap became everything. Shampoo. Laundry detergent. Body wash. Face wash. If something needed cleaning, that little blue bar did the job.

I hadn’t grown up using bar soap, but that summer, it became part of my daily ritual. I’d wash my hands before dinner and scrub the red dust from my feet before curling into my sleeping bag at night. Every village we visited was filled with 100’s of little smiling faces. Children who had next to nothing, yet offered joy and welcome that was so humbling.

Even at sixteen, I was profoundly aware of how fortunate I was, to have two living, loving parents, a home, clean water. Gratitude took root in me that summer in a way it hadn’t before.

When that summer ended, before I left Malawi, I gave away everything I could, including that little blue bar of soap. Someone else needed it more than I did. I never used that type of soap again.

Until five years later.

I was at a friend’s house and went to wash my hands before dinner. Without thinking, I picked up the soap on her sink. Blue, rectangular, familiar. I began to lather up.

And then it hit me.

The scent rushed over me like a wave, and suddenly I was back in Africa. I could feel the dry heat, the sun at my back. I could smell the golden grass, and hear the laughing voices of the children who gathered to play nearby as we washed our clothes. I saw their faces, specific, clear, alive. It was so vivid, so real, I nearly forgot where I was. It was the closest thing to an out of body experience I have ever had.

That bar of soap had opened a door in my mind I didn’t know was there!

That moment was the first time I truly understood how powerful scent can be. I’ve since learned that smell is the only sense directly connected to the limbic system; the part of the brain that processes emotion and memory.

That’s why one whiff of something familiar can transport you to another time, another place, or another version of yourself.

Moments like this are what we aspire to create with our fragrances. We believe scent is so much more than just a luxury. It’s a feeling, a memory, a daily ritual, a quiet moment to connect with yourself and with what matters most. It can ground you, awaken you, or remind you of a chapter you’d completely forgotten was still inside you.