Gabe Smilovic

In celebration of Mother's Day, we're publishing love letters to Mothers, through the language of scent.

Here New York creative, Gabe shares his love letter to his Mother — He speaks of how she instilled in him the tradition of aligning a new scent with each new phase of life. Segmenting periods of time by scent became a ritual she always practiced—and one that Gabe continues to honour today.

"Growing up with a mother who played a dual role as a mom and a founder/creative director of an independent business, the typical examples — Instead, the memories I have of my mother stem strongly from family vacations, times where work was put on pause, and complete presence in the moment finally attainable.

The further we escaped from daily life, the closer I found myself to my mother. Moments where we could, in the simplest of ways, sit on a beach, a couch, or a cliff ledge, and be together, yielding an occasion where her scent could resonate, becoming tangible and clear. Ah, yes, this is my mom."

"Fresh and clean, subtly floral, but natural, with hints of musk and sandalwood, delicately peppered throughout. The more I ponder the relation between these notes and my mother, the more it makes sense.

She is a businesswoman, “tough as nails” as my dad would say, which is where that musk may become relevant. She is a creative, one that needs a clean, fresh, slate and mind to create newness, for lack of a better word. And, she is my mother, one that despite the hard exterior needed to not just survive, but thrive in a ruthless industry, has a softer side, naturally surfacing when with me, and my brother."

"Mom has passed along two scenting traditions and rituals that I hold dear and practice with intent. The first would be the alignment of a new scent with a new phase of life. The timeline could be a year, it could be three, but segmenting periods of time by scent is a ritual she has always practiced, and one that I do as well.

When digging through her old scents before I started writing, with each bottle arose a phase of her life. Moving to Manhattan for the first time, the first-year dating who would
ultimately become her husband, and my father, and so on and so forth. Not all memories are positive, some representative of sickness or loss in the family, or the Covid-19 pandemic, but memories nonetheless and most importantly, feelings, captured in a time capsule that is scent."