05/26/2026
MEMORY IN A BOTTLE
It’s just a wooden perfume bottle I was given as a gift when I was in Paris in my twenties, working for Serge Azar at the time. The company was owned by Gérard Guez, who had worked alongside his brother Paul to help launch Sasson Jeans before eventually breaking away to create three new divisions of his own: Ellie’s Matches, No Jeans, and Serge Azar, designed by Serge Azria.
Back then, Seventh Avenue felt larger than life. Everyone was building something, chasing something, reinventing something, it was a special place and a special time. Fashion wasn’t just clothing. It was identity, ambition, ego, competition, art, and survival all stitched together under fluorescent showroom lights and late night deals.
And somehow, in the middle of it all, while visiting one of the newest boutiques in Paris, this little wooden perfume bottle found its way into my life.
The designer was Armand Ventilo, a friend of Serge’s. I still remember him gifting me one of the very first bottles sometime back in the 1980s. His brand was among the first to truly combine fashion with lifestyle, and at the time, I was completely in awe of it all.
It’s funny, the things we keep.
Why certain things and not others? Why this perfume bottle?
The fragrance is long gone, but not the memories attached to it. Is that the point, I wonder?
I have held onto that little wooden bottle more times than I can count, usually only during the rare moments when life slowed down enough for me to gift myself the memory of it all.
Standing inside Paris’s newest boutique all those years ago with Serge and the few other amazing people who worked together during a time that no longer exists, for a company long gone. Some of those people may not even be here anymore.
And somehow, a wooden perfume bottle still holds the story of what once was.
I recently attended my grandson William’s high school graduation, and I found myself wanting to tell him, even though I wasn’t asked, to try to take it all in.
Take it all in, Will.
Try to slow it down. Try to freeze frame the experiences that will shape you, even though at the time it all seems like one big blur, like some giant watercolor abstract painting. Life has a way of smearing it all together.
But somehow, years later, certain moments remain untouched.
For reasons no one can explain, certain moments come rushing back. You can almost taste them and, in my case, smell them. That sweet fragrance that was once a designer signature, only to fade away with time, disappearing slowly from the air but never completely from memory.
Of course, not every memory arrives gently. Some carry heartbreak, loss, regret, or reminders of chapters we would rather forget. Memories can comfort us, but they can also ache.
Maybe that’s why they are both so special and so fragile.
They are little escapes from reality. Quiet reminders of who we once were, the people we loved, the dreams we carried, and the lives we were living before we even realized those moments would one day matter so much.
Sometimes memories feel less like remembering and more like being gently hugged by the past.
A scent.
A song.
A street in Paris.
A wooden perfume bottle that has sat on my shelf for over forty years.
And suddenly, there you are again.
Completely unaware of how much of life would one day become a memory, and how the smallest things would end up carrying the biggest pieces of our lives.
*Written for the Bernardsville News May 26, 2026 in honor of the graduating Class of 2026.
