So the best thing I learned in the world was Lavender is the scent of Medieval Sex Workers to the point that they often called Prostitutes "Lavenders".

omg amazing tell me more

BASICALLY it's because washer women were perceived as sex workers, and the thing they washed with was lavender flowers/lavender oil

( it was used to help keep bugs away etc )

and quite literally the word Launder comes from the word Lavender

oh interesting!

That in time, that as a way to double meaning it when they were talking about sex workers was to just refer to them as lavender

Dante calls ‘meretrices’ (sex workers) ‘lavenders’ in his Inferno. Chaucer writes that ‘envy is lavender of the court’ in his The Legend of the Good Woman (C.1380), metaphorically drawing on the double meaning of being at once both dirty and clean.

Even as late as 16th century we have poems

"Thou shalt be my lavender Laundress / To wash and keep clean all my gear, / Our two beds together shall be set / Without any let."

i love this because misato's chosen perfume when she wants to get some is lavender

CACKLES

it comes full circle