Years ago in the Clinton era, I was a swinging single in San Francisco. I used to wear Issey Miyake perfume. I’d put on my short skirts, vest without shirt, short blazer (think Melrose Place), chunky high heel loafers, a splash of Miyake and work it! A guy friend used to inhale me as I came near. It actually was kind of a problem as we were always dating different people, but my scent made him wild, and I was wild for the attention.

Then one day I saw that friend, and he didn’t inhale.

“It doesn’t work anymore.”

“What?”

“Your scent, it changed. The Miyake, it doesn’t work. It’s gone,” and he walked off to crush on another woman’s smell.

I had sensed what he said. My scent wasn’t working.

Then in the zeros, it was Michael Kors. That was my smell. I put on jeans, with high heels, an empire shirt, and rode the ups and downs of the ’00s with Michael Kors. I landed a husband, so it must have been okay.

But while my previous scents were about attracting men and feeling sexy, my newest scent holds for me the association of prosperity, security, a newly remodeled bathroom in a big house. In short, what most woman want as they approach middle age. Let me explain.

Shortly after we got the bad Madoff news, my co-host Lawrence Zarian gave me a bottle of Jo Malone Lime Basil and Mandarin bath oil.

I took it home to my beautiful house that I knew we would have to sell soon and plunged my big pregnant body in a warm bath with a splash of this new scent. I was transported. Does it smell like Lime basil and mandarian? No, it smells like a fresh start. It smells like my bills are paid, and I’m pretty. I can’t explain it, I need a scratch and sniff web site. What else are you going to do to unwind when you are pregnant? Run? No. Drink? No. Pop a tranquilizer? That would be another no. I would breathe in the clean, fresh, spring, soapy-like scent of the Jo Malone and tell myself that it was all going to be OK. That my baby would healthy and we would have another nice home one day, and I wouldn’t be eating cat food at 70. That smell always made me feel better.

Cut to this past Christmas when I asked my husband for knee-high boots and Jo Malone Lime Basil and Mandarin bath oil. They ain’t giving it away, but I figured, hey, we got through this year, time for a treat. Christmas day I got the wrong boots (took them back, added money and got the ones I wanted), and no Jo Malone. I said to Mark, “Um, you said you were at Nordstorms. I told you EXACTLY what I wanted.”

Him, “But then it wouldn’t be a surprise.” Argh! I am slightly embarrassed to say how bummed I was about this. I was, a tad furious. I had been waiting to sniff the stuff in my smaller, but nice, rented house and do my affirmations for the new year.

Once again I had to take matters in my own hands. And Voila, here it is. (I also got their vitamin E body balm. The smell is different; see if that shapes up my arm skin.)

And on a rough day, the smell still makes me happy.

Hello, scent for the teens.