It’s 1997 and I’m in my high school’s changing rooms. I’m 13 and not in the slightest bit cool; I don’t have a Jane Norman bag for my PE kit and I’m wearing knock-off Kickers. But if I can’t look like everyone else, at least I can smell like them. We’re all wearing the teen scent of the year: O2 by Impulse. 

“I doused myself in it; it was the go-to,” says Carolyn Owlett, 38. “It fully reminds me of my entire high school years. If I smelled it now, I would 100% be transported back to every boyfriend, every locker room drama.”

She remembers that her friend’s older sister – “the coolest girl in the world” – had a can of O2 and her friend let her use it at a sleepover.

“I thought… this is it. This is sophistication,” says Carolyn, who was 10 at the time. “It kind of said, ‘I have arrived; I’m a teenager now.’”

Natalie Yorke was around the same age when she discovered O2 at her cousin’s house.

“We were going to a school disco – it was around 1999 and I had platform jelly shoes on. I remember spraying it and feeling really grown up – it gave me that ‘big’ feeling.”

After that, she spent her pocket money on it so it was “always in my school bag”.

“I was too young to be using my mum’s expensive perfume and I couldn’t afford my own, but I could afford to buy Impulse,” says Natalie, 34. “If I was going to a sleepover or a cinema trip on a Saturday afternoon, Impulse is what I would spray all over me. It made me feel more adult.”

Impulse has something of a cult following among women of a certain age and it’s a regular feature on Victoria Carser’s Instagram account Knee Deep In The 90s. In March, she posted a picture of the brand’s iconic green can on her Stories and suddenly “approximately 146,000 people were imagining the smell of O2” and begging her to start a petition to bring it back.

“I get so many requests for petitions, but O2 was the most requested,” says Victoria, who started one on Change.org. “It’s got such strong memories for everyone – everyone sprays it and says they’re transported back to their teenage bedroom or the changing rooms after PE.”

Elida, Unilever’s offshoot beauty business, had already discussed bringing back O2 and another of its scents, Air, after getting requests “over and over again” says its marketing director Bartholomew Krysiak. After seeing the response to the petition, he says it was a no-brainer.

“The petition was part of the movement of Impulse shoppers. They’d spoken and that was our response, bringing back their beloved fragrance.”

Within two weeks of the product’s release in Savers stores, it sold out and frustrated shoppers were posting photos of empty shelves on social media – even Victoria couldn’t initially get any because the girl before her had bought 24 cans. When she finally did, the 40-year-old all but time-travelled to her teenage bedroom. 

“When you smell it you can almost remember the decor or hear the 90s music you were listening to. I guess it’s just comforting because it takes you back to a time when you didn’t really have any worries or responsibilities and I think that’s the nice thing about the smell – you remember your life when it was so simplistic.”

It’s well-documented that there’s a strong link between smell and memory because of the brain’s anatomy, a Harvard study found. It’s perhaps why, when I smelled O2 for the first time in decades, I was no longer 38 and standing in my friend’s house in Wolverhampton, but in year eight at a secondary school in Cheshire. It was such a vivid sensation it gave me goosebumps and then made me well up – not because it made me sad, but because I’m hopelessly nostalgic and it reminded me of such an innocent time.

“From a science perspective, the part of the brain that processes memories also processes fragrance, so when you smell something, it takes you back to your grandmother’s house or your childhood or a first date,” says Bartholomew. “Fragrance has this very powerful function that is often overlooked.”

It’s one of the reasons O2’s scent profile hasn’t been changed for the relaunch – it’s still fundamentally the same lemon and freesia (who knew?) smell that debuted in the UK in 1997 and went on to become Impulse’s third most popular body spray.

“We knew that whatever we were going to bring back had to have the power to literally transport you back to the 90s,” says Bartholomew, adding that he’s never worked on a brand that’s had this much hype. “Seeing the reaction and being able to bring a real smile and piece of comfort to women is amazing, and it feels quite humbling to be part of that.”

Victoria says she’s been inundated with followers sending her photos of their O2 purchases; Natalie had no idea it was back and gasped when she heard.

“I’ll definitely be buying some. If I smelled it now, it would take me right back to listening to Classic FM on a Sunday. I feel like Impulse is definitely something that defines the late 90s/early 2000s for me,” she says.

Main image: courtesy of Impulse