Yves St. Laurent died a few days ago, and that made me think of perfume. Of course, most things make me think of perfume, but Yves St. Laurent was one of those figures who looms larger than life in my early years.

It all started because I had a great Aunt Mitzy. Mitzy was he closest thing our working-class family had to Zsa Zsa Gabor. Mitzy was born to working-class parents, like the rest of us, but while some of us (my parents being prime examples) clawed their way to the middle, MItzy sidestepped numerous financial disasters to land in a bunch of money. Well, it wasn't what Donald Trump would call money, but it looked pretty good to us.

Mitzy lived half a year in New Orleans and half a year on the Atlantic Seaboard. Although New Orleans was less than a day away by car to where we lived, it seemed as exotic (and frightening) as New York City or Paris. She summered on the Jersey Shore, the poor man's Hyannisport. Like most well-to-do Southern women of the 1970s, she had a fur coat and she wore a lot of jewelry.

Mitzy could do the things that other people in my family did not even know were important to do. For instance, Mitzy had breakfast at Brennan's and ate at other notable eateries in the French Quarter and she could pronounce the French names on the menu. She knew the difference between rhinestones and diamonds. She taught me that pearls, like conversation and furniture, came in good and bad versions and the higher quality was preferable, even if it was a bit harder to come by.

One year when I was perhaps sixteen (in perfume years this was after Muguet de Bois but before I became I treated Avon's fragrances like olfactory crack), Aunt Mitzy came to visit. She didn't stay with us, but I do remmber some visits. I even made her a cup of tea once. (Mitzy enjoyed cocktails but she never drank before 5 p.m.) When her trip concluded and she was ready to go back to New Orleans, she showered all of her various hosts and hostesses with gifts.

Normally, no one showered a sixteen-year-old like me with gifts, but Aunt Mitzy did. I don't know whether it was easier than trying to find something for my parents (who were the actual hosts) or whether she liked me. But we must have had some conversations, because Aunt Mitzy showed up and gave me a gigantic bottle of Y by Yves St. Laurent.

If you don't remember the scent, it's because you're not me. I will never forget it. The bottle was outrageous, maybe 5 ounces, and it wasn't the cologne, it was eau-de-parfum. It had to have cost a fortune and it was one of what would later become an avalanche of things that I knew were valuable but which my parents did not. I was stunned beyond breathlessness by her generosity.

For years, I wore Y (pronounced, as Aunt Mitzy would tell you i-grecque which is the way the French say the letter Y, meaning "Greek i"). In the dismal days of high school study hall and K-Mart clothing and generic canned food and plastic jewelry, Y became my lifeline. It connected me to Aunt Mitzy, for one thing, and it connected me to a world where people did not eat fast food out of cardboard containers or make their own clothes or cruise the yard sales looking for bounty. Oh, I still did a lot of those things, but I did it wearing Y.

An interesting thing took place in that time. I came, over the years, to not favor the scent so much. I wondered, later, if I truly liked it or whether I just liked the idea of it. A couple of years later (after I had gotten over the Avon extravaganza years) I actually traveled to Paris and bought Eau de Calendre by Paco Rabanne. I just bought the cologne and the little bottle at that; it was all I could afford. But I adored it. I even enjoyed just looking at it.

And so, gradually, Y fell into disuse. I wore it periodically, just for the heady intoxication it brought me to think that I might turn out more like Aunt Mitzy than some of my motorcycle-riding, tattooed, flirting-with-bankruptcy relatives.

And that is how I remember Yves St. Laurent. My Aunt Mitzy introduced me to him.

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