An independent publication on the cultural life of fragrance.
NOV 8 2026
Deja, 25
I had just started working, and with my first paycheck I decided to buy myself my first “big girl” fragrance after years of body mists and sprays. My mom’s collection was expansive, and I had always been drawn to the different bottle shapes and notes.Deja, 25
Never outgrowing the teenage Fantasy.
Deja when she first found her fragrance
As any typical high schooler, I was obsessed with YouTube, especially the beauty vloggers. I had gone down a rabbit hole of perfume collections and hauls and kept seeing Britney Spears Fantasy. From the way they described the scent profile to the bottle’s signature shape, I just knew it was meant to be.
I didn’t have the money to buy the full set, but there was a celebrity fragrance set that had the tiniest bottle, and from then on I was hooked.
It’s the fragrance that the popular older sister in a 2000s movie was wearing, for sure. It’s a sugary vanilla scent that settles into kind of a warm, flirty floral.
I first wore it to a football game that I was cheering at. Not that anyone could smell me from the stands, but it was important to me! I wore it on my first date with my boyfriend, and we have been together since! It did its job.
Fantasy has been used at all of my graduations—high school, college, and soon graduate school.
I think it clicked when I wore it to my college graduation. It was a very sentimental day, and I thought about how I had worn it religiously throughout high school but slowly stopped picking it up as much. I had a moment to myself to think about how a decision I made when I was still in my teens created a time capsule of all the times I’ve worn the scent and how I’ve grown.
I always go back to Fantasy for big moments to honor my teenage self and all of the things she went through. It reminds me that no matter how much 15 or 16-year-old me felt like I did everything wrong, I made a great choice in how I want to smell.
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