"Dress shabbily and they notice the dress. Dress impeccably and they notice the woman – Coco Chanel."
- Sigourney Weaver to Melanie Griffith, Working Girl
By now everyone in the world has seen at least one of the commercials aimed at leveraging the current financial crisis to point out how its really an opportunity to learning to tighten our belts and reassess our values merely disguised as tragedy. These ads represent a herculean effort to put the emphasis on the silver lining, rather than admit that giving up all the finery in an effort to make ends meet sometimes, plainly put, sucks. While it is a good opportunity to reassess and put focus back on the things that really matter -- quality not quantity, spending time with those we love doing free things, rather than all sitting in different rooms watching separate Tivos just because we can -- the flat fact of the matter is, sometimes you buy the thing you need to get you by, not the thing you'd like to have. You could choose the luxury item, credit cards be damned, that special item that reflects that you have made it, even if you aren't there yet. But somehow, at a time when my life includes seeing former classmates being interviewed about applying for food stamps and learning what it means to be "upside down" in your mortgage from thirty-somethings moving back in with their parents, I just can't bring myself to splurge on the more expensive thing simply because I want it.
As I go to fill my apartment with furniture to get me through this year (since David has all of ours), aspirational has been a key word in my shopping vocabulary. I like IKEA, and they make some nice things, but in my heart I lust after a very expensive and beautiful couch from Crate & Barrel. It will take me a fairly long time to get to that couch, though, and in the meantime, well, I'd prefer not to be sitting on the floor. So while I shop, I look for furniture that seems to say, "I haven't made it yet, but I will someday."
When it comes to perfume, Revlon's thirty-plus year old staple, Charlie, is a lot like IKEA in the aspirational sense. Good old classic Charlie. There appear to be several versions of Charlie now, each named after a color with coordinated packaging, but I am talking about the one, the only, the original. Charlie was one of my very first perfumes. Is there seriously anyone who grew up in the 80s who hasn’t worn, or at least tried, Charlie? While Charlie was created in the 1970s, Charlie was basically in every grocery and drugstore by the early 1980s, about the time I was in elementary school and also developing an interest in my mother’s extensive make-up and perfume collection.According to Angela over at Now Smell This!, Charlie's top notes are citrus oils, peach, hyacinth, and tarragon; its heart notes are jasmine, lily of the valley, cyclamen, and carnation; and its base is cedarwood, sandalwood, oakmoss, and vanilla. Apparently there is some debate over whether Charlie is a floral oriental, green floral, green chypre—but really, I am never sure I know what these things are supposed to be classified as anyway.
While trying Charlie, I kept trying to figure out what it reminded me of, other than eight-year-old girls clomping around in their mothers’ shoes, pale pink lipstick smeared about their tiny rose-petal lips. Then, on a whim, I grabbed my bottle of Chanel No. 5 EDT, which Luca Turin describes as a “peachy floral” in Perfumes: The Guide. All be damned – Charlie is a No. 5 EDT knock-off! If you took the peachy sweetness out of No. 5 EDT and used lower quality ingredients, you’d have Charlie. It bears only a passing resemblance to the No. 5 EDP (like several degrees separated and related by marriage not blood), but Charlie is to No. 5 EDT the way that I am to my wealthy second cousin, who either sends me a very nice check at graduation and card at Christmas or her daughter to very special occasions (i.e. my hipster evening wedding in a brewery). The longer you wear Charlie, the thinner and flatter it gets, where as No. 5 EDT holds it’s delightful quality. But I do see why Charlie is still being bottled thirty-five years later. It’s not a bad fragrance; in fact it’s a shadow of one of the most famous fragrances in the world. And as shadows go, things could be far worse.
It is mostly a trick of fate that lead me to the a place that affords me intimate knowledge of all that is the lovely world of Chanel; without it, and before it, it’s nice to know I recognized the desire for quality, even in my youth. I might not have had any idea how I was going to get there, but by god I was going to get my life together someday. I was aspirational, even working two jobs as a waitress and copy shop clerk. And that's what Charlie is, at heart. It's the olfactory equivalent, not of giving up, but hoping for more. It is Melanie Griffith at the beginning of Working Girls, with her big hair and loud make-up and much too much bangle jewelry and her relentless hopefulness and determination. 
Charlie is also definitely worth owning, in my opinion. You should also own Chanel No. 5 in at least one of its incarnations, but for the sticker price (which in my case was free, since a friend gave me a 15ml bottle she scored for $2.99), Charlie is a nice, cheap alternative to remind you that, maybe not today, but sometime in your tomorrows, what you aspire to will be within reach.We the great and small,
stand on a star and blaze a trail of desire
through the darkening dawn...
Silver cities rise.
The morning lights, the streets that lead them
and sirens call them on with a song.
It's asking for the taking,
trembling,
shaking.
Oh, my heart is aching!
- "Let the River Run," Carly Simon
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