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Unscripted
Stories·Scent·Music·Memory
Life, remembered through the senses.
A space for anyone who wants to slow down and live intentionally — through fragrance, music, and storytelling. With Cari McClelland.
Life, remembered through the senses.
A space for anyone who wants to slow down and live intentionally — through fragrance, music, and storytelling. With Cari McClelland.
Personal essays, raw and honest
Fragrance as feeling and memory
The soundtrack of a life lived
Past, present and what endures
White Shoulders Cologne
Est. 1945 · Still Made Today
I was about eight years old when my grandmother gave me my very first bottle of perfume.
It was White Shoulders.
I can still remember the excitement of holding that beautiful bottle in my hands. I would spray the tiniest amount onto my wrists, convinced that wearing perfume somehow made me one step closer to being a grown-up. I felt elegant. Sophisticated. Like I belonged in a world I couldn't wait to grow into.
What amazes me now isn't that I remember the perfume.
It's everything else I remember because of it.
Even today, if someone simply says White Shoulders, I don't just remember the fragrance — I can actually smell it in my mind. It's as though my memory has kept a bottle tucked away somewhere deep inside my heart.
And the moment that fragrance returns... so does my grandmother.
If I close my eyes, I can see her standing there as clearly as if no time has passed at all. I can almost see the little pink dress I was wearing. I hear the familiar sounds of her home, where Sunday afternoons often meant Lawrence Welk playing softly on the television while beautiful big band music drifted through the house.
I can smell cinnamon buns baking in the oven. Fresh pancakes on the griddle. Coffee brewing. I can see the little box of Smarties she always had waiting for her grandchildren because she never let us leave without a treat.
None of those memories arrive one at a time.
They come rushing back together — all because of one familiar fragrance.
My grandmother has been gone for many years now, yet that scent has the remarkable ability to bring her back to me. For just a moment, it feels as though she's standing right beside me again. I don't simply remember her.
I feel her.
That is the extraordinary power of fragrance.
A perfume isn't just something we wear. It quietly becomes part of the soundtrack of our lives. It settles into our happiest moments, our celebrations, our Sunday mornings, our family traditions, our love stories, and even our goodbyes. Years later, when we encounter that scent again, it doesn't simply remind us of the past.
It opens the door and invites us back inside.
The beautiful thing is that White Shoulders is still being made today. Every now and then, I see that familiar bottle on a store shelf or online, and I can't help but smile. I know that if I were to spray it on my wrist today, within seconds I'd be transported back to that little girl in her pink dress — back to my grandmother's kitchen, the smell of cinnamon in the air, Lawrence Welk playing in the background, a little box of Smarties waiting just for me, and the feeling of being completely loved.
That tiny bottle has become far more than a perfume. It has become a time machine.
Today, I don't collect fragrances because they smell beautiful.
I collect them because they hold pieces of our lives. Every bottle is a chapter. Every fragrance is a memory waiting to be written.
And every time I catch a whisper of White Shoulders, I'm eight years old again — standing in my grandmother's house, wearing my little pink dress, listening to big band music, smelling cinnamon in the kitchen, reaching for a box of Smarties, and feeling completely loved.
That is the gift fragrance has given me.
And it is the gift I hope to share with you.
In 1986, I was seventeen years old.
I'd just moved from Saskatchewan to Vancouver to live with my mom. Overnight, my world became so much bigger. Everything felt different. The city was bigger. The pace was faster. The people seemed more confident.
And I often felt like a very small fish in a very big pond.
I had landed my first job at Burger King, and for the first time in my life, I had earned enough money to buy something that felt wonderfully extravagant.
One day, I walked into Eaton's department store in downtown Vancouver. I wandered through the fragrance department, taking my time as if I had done this a hundred times before. Secretly, I was nervous. I wanted to look like I belonged there. I wanted to feel like the young woman I hoped I was becoming.
Then I found it.
Beautiful by Estée Lauder.
I bought it with money I had earned myself.
To anyone else, it was just a bottle of perfume.
To me, it was independence.
It was confidence.
It was proof that I was building a life of my own.
Walking out of Eaton's with that elegant little bag in my hand, I felt taller somehow. Stronger. More sophisticated. As though I had officially stepped into adulthood.
Every morning before school, I would spray on Beautiful. It became part of my armour. Not because perfume changes who you are... but because sometimes it helps you remember who you're becoming.
Beautiful — Estée Lauder
Est. 1985 · Still Available Today
Today, all I have to do is picture that bottle. Instantly, I can smell it.
Before I know it, I'm seventeen again.
I'm walking the hallways of Carson Graham. I can almost hear the echo of hundreds of students talking between classes. I remember the rows of lockers, the familiar musty smell of the classrooms, the scent of fresh paper and those unmistakable pink erasers that every classroom seemed to have.
Then the soundtrack begins.
Wham! fills the air with Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go. The Police. Madonna. Phil Collins.
The music of the '80s comes rushing back, and suddenly I'm not remembering those years... I'm living them again.
That is what fragrance does. It doesn't simply remind us of a moment. It recreates an entire world.
The sights. The sounds. The people. The emotions. The hopes we carried and the dreams we hadn't yet realized.
The wonderful thing is that Beautiful by Estée Lauder is still available today. Every time I see that familiar bottle, I smile, because I know what's waiting inside. Not just a fragrance. A chapter of my life.
I'll be buying another bottle soon — not because I'm chasing nostalgia, but because I want to revisit the young woman who believed anything was possible. The one who was scared. The one who was brave. The one who was learning that sometimes confidence begins with believing in yourself... and maybe wearing a beautiful perfume.
Looking back, I realize I wasn't just collecting fragrances. I was collecting pieces of my own story. And those stories still live inside every bottle.
It's amazing how one fragrance can hold an entire love story.
For me, that fragrance is Bijan.
Whenever I see that familiar yellow bottle, I'm instantly transported back to 1993 — the year I met my husband.
I was a young single mom, raising my daughter and doing my best to build a life for the two of us. Like so many people, I hoped that one day I would find someone who would love me. But even more than that, I hoped they would love my little girl too.
Then I met him.
I was wearing Bijan.
The moment I think of that fragrance, the memories come flooding back. I remember getting ready for our dates, carefully spraying on my perfume and wondering where this new relationship might lead. I remember the butterflies, the warmth that rushed through my face whenever he smiled at me, and the way he made me feel beautiful simply by being myself.
He opened doors for me.
He made me laugh.
He believed in me.
Most importantly, he loved my daughter as if she were his own.
We had no idea we were beginning the rest of our lives.
This past July, we celebrated 32 years of marriage.
Bijan Women
The fragrance of falling in love · 1993
Rapture — Victoria's Secret
The first fragrance he chose just for me
Life hasn't been perfect. No relationship ever is. We've celebrated incredible joys, weathered difficult seasons, raised three beautiful children together, and built a life that neither of us could have imagined when we first met.
Through it all, he has remained my greatest supporter, my best friend, and still my knight in shining armour.
I still have that original bottle of Bijan sitting on my dresser. It's a little dusty now. Time has changed the fragrance inside, and it probably doesn't smell quite the way it did in 1993. But I could never throw it away.
Because it no longer holds perfume. It holds the beginning of our story.
Not long after we met, we were shopping together when he took me into a Victoria's Secret store. Without me expecting it, he bought me a bottle of Rapture — the beautiful perfume in the iconic heart-shaped bottle. It was the first fragrance anyone had ever chosen just for me.
That gift meant more than he probably realized.
Every time I wore Rapture, I thought of him. It became the fragrance of our early years together — the years when we were building our home, growing our family, and dreaming about the future.
Looking back now, I realize that fragrances don't simply remind us of moments.
White Shoulders will always remind me of childhood and my grandmother.
Beautiful will always remind me of becoming independent and finding my place.
Bijan will always remind me of falling in love.
And Rapture will always remind me of building a life with the man who chose me.
I would bottle the butterflies before a first date. The excitement of wondering if this might be the person you've been waiting for. The warmth that rushed to my cheeks every time he smiled at me or told me I was beautiful.
I would bottle doors opened with kindness, long conversations that made time seem to stand still, and the feeling of being loved exactly as I was.
I would bottle the moment I realized he didn't just love me — he loved my daughter too.
I'd bottle the quiet confidence that maybe life was about to become something I had only dreamed of. The innocence of not knowing that those early dates would become a lifetime. That thirty-two years later, we'd still be side by side, raising three incredible children, celebrating life's victories, surviving its challenges, laughing together, and continuing to choose each other every single day.
Most of all, I'd bottle gratitude.
Because looking back, I realize the most life-changing moments rarely announce themselves.
Sometimes they begin with an ordinary evening...
A spray of Bijan.
A young single mother with butterflies in her heart.
A kind man who opened a door.
And a love story that quietly became forever.
Latest Notes
Christmas morning. A little girl. A bottle from her grandmother. The scent that started everything — and what it means that it no longer exists.
Read →The Fragrance FilesThe science of scent and memory — and the bottle that made me understand what fragrance actually does to a person.
Read →Scent & SoundScent and music both bypass the rational brain and go straight to memory. On why these two senses carry so much of who we are.
Read →
Music is the other sense memory we carry everywhere — the songs that marked every chapter, played on repeat, and still ambush us in grocery stores twenty years later.
Read: The Soundtrack EssayFor mornings that feel like a ceremony
A love letter in twelve songs
For candles, wine, and remembering
For the woman who found herself again
Personal essays, reader stories, and guided prompts to help you document your own sensory autobiography.
"What scent takes you back to childhood?"
"What song would play at the movie of your life?"
"What moment do you wish you could bottle?"
What was your first perfume — the one someone put in your hands before you were old enough to choose? The discontinued one you're still quietly grieving?
Notes Unscripted isn't just my story. It's a collection point for all of ours — a record of the way fragrance marks a life.
Come find me. Tell me what you wore. Tell me what still passes the test of time.
What was your first perfume?
The one that made you feel grown-up before you were.
What did you wear in high school?
The one that, if you smelled it now, would take you straight back.
Is there one you've lost?
Discontinued, reformulated, gone. The one you still grieve a little.
What have you worn for decades?
The ones that have passed the test of time.
The Scent Journal, personal essays, exclusive playlists — delivered with warmth and intention. No spam. Just stories worth keeping.