Every Friday, Now Smell This hosts a “community project.” For today’s group post, everyone is wearing and naming the a “down the rabbit hole” scent—the fragrance that turned her/him into a perfume obsessive.

Mine? The original Jean Paul Gaultier perfume, now called Classique. It was launched in 1993, and I wore it regularly in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It’s not a niche fragrance, nor the creation of an independent perfumer, no—but thanks to this fragrance in its female-torso bottle, I started thinking about fragrance in a deeper and more detailed way. I realized that rose and vanilla were (and are!) two of my favorite notes to wear. I learned the difference between an Eau de Toilette and an Eau de Parfum, and I noticed the differences between these two formulations of Gaultier’s fragrance. I admired the bottle and learned that it was inspired by an earlier, iconic example: Schiaparelli’s Shocking (created in 1937). Personal taste, terminology, history, visual identity; all aspects of fragrance that I still ponder and research.

If you’re a NST reader, please do add your own gateway perfume to the community post today!