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When I was 14, a friend and her family picked me up to go to a play. When I got into the car, her normally reticent 18-year-old (and thus super-intriguing) brother said to me: “Wow, you smell amazing.” I had recently received my first bottle of Issey Miyake’s L’Eau d’Issey as a birthday request—I liked the idea of a watery smell and felt a Japanese designer was terribly sophisticated—and was taken with spraying it into the air above my head and twirling under the mist.

This encounter cemented my decades-long love for the ’90s classic (and for being told I smell great), during which time I collected many of the variations of it that came and went on the local department store counter like colourful siblings in town for a short visit. On a given day, I’d pick a version to match my mood: Summer of 2005 or 2008 if it was warm outside, A Drop of Cloud (2009) if I was feeling pensive, Fleur de Bois (2010) to cultivate a much-needed air of mystery. Somewhere along the way, I actually stopped wearing the original, since each new one offered what I loved about it along with a new and exciting twist.