“To many, Dolce and Gabanna’s Red is just a perfume. To me, it’s my mother in a bottle.”

Lauren and her Mum.

“My Mum, Gillian, died over 15 years ago.

Still to this day, any time that I smell the familiar fragrance on an unsuspecting stranger passing by, or walk past it in a perfume store, I’m taken back to countless times my Mum and I enjoyed together before her passing. Her daily routine included several spritzes of the stuff before she would even consider leaving the house.

The perfume was the one thing I asked to keep when her belongings got sorted out. I disappointed myself by spraying most of the bottle on my pillow so I felt that she was with me in my sleep, something I found difficult to do at the age of five when I was suddenly without Mummy for the first time in my life

To many, Dolce and Gabanna’s Red is just a perfume. To me, it’s my mother in a bottle.

The bottle lasted weeks and it was all mine and my grandmother’s house smelt like for years after I’d lost my Mum, and my Grandmother had lost her daughter. When I started to get pocket money from doing my chores around the house, I knew immediately that I wanted to save it up. Not for sweets, toys or dress up clothes (I basically lived in a Cinderella dress for three years, so dressing up was a big deal for me), but for a bottle of the old D&G Red.

My favourite memory of getting a whiff of the perfume is when I was given her handbag to distract me on a long journey in the back of the car when I was around four years old. In my haste and excitement of ‘smelling mummy’, I dropped the bottle out of my chubby little hands and it smashed and spilled all over the back of her car, meaning that everything that was in the car stunk of it!

Scent is the one thing that really bring my mum back to me, and I’ll always be thankful to Red for allowing me to feel that sense of comfort once more.”

-Lauren McLeish