When Lolita Lempicka launched its perfume, in 1997, I was at the ripe age of too young to know what being a woman was about but wanting badly to get in on the secret. It was the year of Shania Twain’s anthem “Man! I Feel Like a Woman.” Femininity to me was equal parts riot grrrl and girl power. And Lolita Lempicka perfume hit me right at my yearning, confused heart.
In the pages of Seventeen and YM magazines, Lolita Lempicka looked like a fairy tale. It was the creation of a dreamy French fashion designer who chose her first name from the Nabokov heroine and paired it with the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka. Everything about it was as far removed from my suburban reality as possible.
