The Special Scents That Make Up My Life

Last Friday, I was wrapping up a Zoom call in my kitchen, with my daughter, Harper, asleep in my arms. As the call ended, Harper started wiggling awake. I put my nose to her head—her softly matted hair still warm with sleep—and inhaled deeply. At the same time, my mom walked into the room.

“This is random,” I said to her, “but what is your favorite smell?” She paused, hip against the counter, and gestured to the sleepy baby in my arms: “It’s that. You know that when I smell Harper, I smell you.”

I’ve been told that the “new baby smell” doesn’t last forever, but every mother knows it and carries it with them for the rest of their lives. Harper’s smell has enveloped me in a way I can’t even put into words.

“If you could bottle it up…” my mom says, trailing off. “There’s nothing like it.” Even the most ordinary smells have always carried deep memories for me. I can still remember snack time in preschool, my teacher handing me a Dixie cup filled with animal crackers that felt like a vanilla lemony treasure.

Every time I smell lipstick, I think about my grandma, who always reapplied hers throughout the day. Hay bales and horse feed remind me of True Grit, my first film set, where everything was new. When I think of love, I think about a few Tuesdays ago, when my husband, Josh, came home, hugged me—a comforting musk that instantly puts me at ease—and then pulled from behind his back a bouquet of red roses wrapped in brown butcher paper and twine.

Roses—red, white, and crystal—will always remind me of our wedding in Montecito, California. We toured the venue holding hands, walking through the rose gardens, past the lemon trees and sprawling pink bougainvilleas, and knew immediately that it was our place. Less than six months later, on an early-summer day, in front of our closest friends and family, we walked through those same gardens, down an aisle lined with the whitest roses I’ve ever seen, inhaling that verdant earth and fresh salty ocean air, and committed to spend forever with each other.

Now more than ever, I’m stopping to smell the roses, as cliché as that sounds. I’m moving more slowly, more intentionally, being present with what’s right in front of me. I’m thinking about what I wear, who I surround myself with, how I take care of my mind and body. It’s what I’ve been writing about in my Substack newsletter for the past two years, what I want to model for my daughter, and what I want to continue to radiate in the world.

As a daughter myself, I know it matters.

I sometimes wonder what Harper will remember of this time years from now. I’ve accepted that she probably won’t remember these early mornings we’ve spent together, swaying back and forth as the clock turns from 2 to 3 a.m., or the countless sunny days we’ve spent barefoot in the backyard, saying “Hi, birds,” picking wildflowers, spelling out her name with the stems.

But someday Harper will know my smell, the faint smell of my perfume. That thought made me so excited to partner with Estée Lauder for its new perfume, Glimmer. It’s the first perfume I’ve ever worn that truly smells like me. It has notes of roses and vanilla (now you know why these notes are so personal and important to me), which I love, and carries an essence, like an invisible heirloom, that feels personal to me, to us.

In the kitchen, my mom shared with me that the first perfume she ever wore was also Estée Lauder. She bought it in the ’80s with her own money and wore it for years, before she met my dad, well before she ever knew me. When we started working on the creative for Glimmer, we talked about what song would be most fitting for the campaign—I knew immediately it had to be Nina Simone’s 1960s classic “Feeling Good.” Recording the cover—while pregnant with Harper, my mom on the set with me—I was flooded with emotions: nostalgia, an appreciation of something great from the past, joy in the present moment, and anticipation for the future.

Soon, Harper will start building her own memories—smells, faces, sounds, moments. I can’t wait for her to share them with me. Who knows, maybe one day she’ll write her own story about it.

Hailee’s Favorite Memories

This article was originally published on Vogue.com.