Not a Perfume. A Memory.💌

accent: rust

paper: cream

I Don't Have a Signature Anything,
and I've Stopped Apologizing for It

ON BEING EASY TO SUM UP

There's a version of the internet where everyone has a signature scent, a signature outfit, a signature drink order, a signature way of doing their hair — some tidy, repeatable thing that supposedly sums you up. It's presented like a milestone. Like eventually you're supposed to land on The Thing and then just... be that, indefinitely.

I've never had one. Not because I haven't tried — I've bought the perfume everyone said would be "so me," worn the same three outfits on rotation hoping one would calcify into a personality trait. It never sticks. I like something for three months and then I don't. That used to feel like a failure to commit to myself, like everyone else had figured out who they were and I was still auditioning.

But watch how the idea actually gets used and it starts to look less like self-knowledge and more like branding. A signature scent is really just a scent that's easy to package into a story — "the one she always wears" — because a story is more shareable than the truth, which is usually just: she liked several things and this is the one someone happened to notice. Consistency photographs well. It doesn't necessarily mean anything underneath it.

the ask isn't self-knowledge, it's legibility

I think what's actually being asked for, underneath "find your signature," is legibility. Be easy to sum up. Be a recognizable pattern so people can predict you correctly, so brands can market to you correctly, so your whole personality fits inside a caption. That's a reasonable thing to want from a product line. It's a strange thing to want from a person.

Being multiple things at once isn't the same as being unfinished. Some people are genuinely consistent, and that's fine too — but the pressure to become consistent, to sand yourself down into one repeatable identity because that's what reads as "having it together," isn't the same as actually knowing yourself. Sometimes knowing yourself looks like liking vanilla in October and citrus in June and not being able to explain why, and not needing to.

I don't have a signature anything. I have a rotation, and it changes, and I've stopped treating that like a problem I haven't solved yet.

xo, journaled