HOW TO SMELL LIKE YOU SUMMER IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE

Smell like you summer in Provence — even if your holiday budget says otherwise

The South of France doesn’t smell like anywhere else. It smells like dry heat and lemon peel. Like warm terracotta and cool marble floors. It smells faintly of cigarette smoke from the next table and the perfume dabbed behind someone’s ears three hours ago. It’s lavender fields rolling into the horizon and apricots ripening in wicker bowls. It’s not loud…but it lingers.

And because I’m a scent person — an unapologetically indulgent, emotionally-attached-to-every-fragrance-I’ve-ever-worn kind of person — I want to bottle it. Or at least borrow it.

I may not have a rose-covered villa in Ramatuelle (yet), but I do have a shelf of perfumes that smell like one. And honestly? That’s the next best thing. Because fragrance is the only thing that travels faster than memory. One spritz and I’m back in the car with the windows down, hair tied with a silk scarf, pretending I’m in a Slim Aarons photograph.