Girlfriend Getaways

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From left: Kathy and Karen in a tuberose field outside the town of Grasse, in southern France (Marie Hennechart)

"Every mean girl wore this stuff!" Yalda exclaims.

This is the great mystery of perfume: One whiff can transport you to the past, from the prom to the pew behind the old ladies in church to the day you first got your heart broken. Kathy and I have no connections to Poison, but Giorgio sends us careering back to Los Angeles in the 1980s, when every agent, director, and actress-waitress bathed in the stuff. We recall, fondly, coauthored screenplays that never found a home and the guy in our old apartment building who borrowed our iron and then said it was stolen.

For our last class, Laurence has placed scales and pipettes at each workstation so that we can practice making an eau de cologne with six simple ingredients from a formula on the chalkboard. There's grumbling.

"When do we get to come up with our own recipe for a perfume?" asks Fiona, who's traveled all the way from Australia and is not about to be denied.

"Oh, no!" Laurence replies. "This is possible only after at least one year of study."

The course booklet states that students will learn to mix scents, but we know enough to understand that creating a perfume is complex: A scent like Estée Lauder's Beautiful can have hundreds of ingredients.

Pipettes in hand, we get to work. Laurence tells us to start with lemon oil and bergamot for the light citrus notes and then to add lavandin and rosemary for stronger aromatic accents. Just as we are finishing, she hesitates and says with a wink, "Perhaps you might also mix in some sandalwood or a tiny amount of vetiver. Sometimes a self-evolution is required."

I suddenly realize that self-evolution means Laurence is giving us permission to veer away from the formula on the board and create our own scents.

As usual, Kathy throws caution to the wind. She loves neroli, an oil made from the bitter orange flower, and I watch as she plops droplets into her beaker. I put a few drops of sandalwood into mine and glance over as she mixes in lime and more neroli.

"I'm going to call this L'Air de Old Man," I say, wrinkling my nose at what I've concocted.

"How about Rich Old Man?" Johari suggests.

"Alas, no," I reply. "Old Man on the Dole."

Kathy picks up my vial and takes a sniff. "This is better than mine," she says. "I've totally wrecked my perfume. I never know when to stop."

And that's precisely what makes our 30-year bond so special. We may each have our own way of doing things, but the formula for our friendship stands the test of time. Just like Chanel No. 5.