Calvin Klein Eternity Summer 2005

The year was 1991 and the place was the concrete jungle of Chicago. As I meandered through my senior year of undergraduate work in Commerce and Marketing, I shared a tiny studio apartment and studied with a woman who made the monotony a little easier to bear. She was gorgeous - a beautiful, tall blonde with crystal blue eyes, bronzed skin and a killer intellect. As she whizzed through Finance classes with straight A's while I lumbered by with low B's, I wondered how one person could be so lucky. To make her more enviable, she had a successful, extremely handsome fiance. What kept my entire being from turning an unattractive shade of green was her genuinely sweet and kind nature. She could disarm any similarly envious woman with a smile and an innocent, interested greeting. And she managed to help keep me sane in the face of an inordinate amount of work and writing. She taught me the nuances of Word Perfect, which drastically increased my ability to quickly write reports and term papers for my English and Marketing classes. She inspired me to achieve more than I ever thought possible. She was and always will be a bright light during a pivotal and trying time in my life. The fragrance that instantly reminds me of that year and those challenges, her fragrance, was Calvin Klein Eternity.


I cannot wear Eternity. It belongs to her. And I find it too ... too ... 1991. However, what I can wear and will continue to wear as long as possible is the 2005 version of Eternity Summer. What a luscious green and casual specimen, along the same lines as Chanel Bel Respiro. Now before you gasp at my emboldened comparison, I realize putting Calvin Klein and Chanel in the same fragrance category is quite a stretch. However, Eternity Summer 2005 does possess a similar reminder of waking up in a grassy field, with the added touch of lily of the valley and a garden of verbena close by. Like a bed of soft, cool grass under a shady oak tree, it comforts and soothes, refreshes and awakens. Juxtaposed to the original Eternity, Summer 2005 has none of its sharpness and heady florals. In fact, I cannot find a single resemblance between the two. Instead, Summer 2005 sparkles and shines independant of its namesake. Its dewy, refreshing, green scent could easily be unisex. With notes of hydroponic (grown in nutrients rather than soil) lily of the valley, verbena, violet leaf, white jasmin, gardenia, lotus, green island fig, and mimosa, this soft, office-friendly fragrance is perfect for summer. Right around now, late May, I will pull it from the back of my collection for regular rotation. And thank goodness, I am able to stay grounded in present times and not be thrown back to the scholastic and intellectual challenges of 1991.

Eternity Summer 2005 can be found on Perfume Bay. A 3.4 oz. spray retails for $45.90.