Giveaway: Neela Vermeire Creations would like to give away a discovery set of its three fragrances–Mohur, Bombay Bling and Trayee–to one Bois de Jasmin reader.

How it works: Please leave a comment answering the following questions: “1) What is the most dramatic, bold fragrance you’ve tried? 2) On the other hand, what understated, subtle perfumes do you enjoy?” Each participant will be assigned a number, and the winner will be selected via a random number generator. Draw is now closed; I will announce the winner this weekend.

Giveaway explanation: anybody from the US or overseas can enter as long as you answer specific questions explained in the contest rules. If a winner does not respond within a week, I reserve the right to randomly pick a runner up.

Key Change and Nina Z! Congratulations! Please contact me .

I reserve the right to pick another winner if I don’t receive a response within a week.

Andy describes how seasonal blossoms can be captured in sugar.

If you love spring as much as I do, you may agree that it always seems to come and go quicker than it should. One week, I was strolling under pink clouds of cherry blossoms, and the next, the petals had all floated away from the branches. I didn’t have time to be dismayed though, when richly perfumed purple lilacs had begun to steal the show. The season always seems to play out like a vaudeville show of flowers, with one beautiful act following the next.

A few weeks ago Victoria wrote about salting cherry blossoms, but you can also use sugar to capture the delicate flavors of spring. If you have never tried candying flowers before, it is extremely easy, and after you’ve done it once, you will find the task an irresistible way to extend the season of flowers like jasmine, lilac, rose and honeysuckle, to name a few. This spring, for instance, I found myself longing to preserve the beauty of sweetly scented violets, which are common in my area in the springtime. And since I had so many, I decided to candy them and make some perfumed syrup. My instructions below call for violets, but use whatever favorite edible flowers you can find, from pansies to roses.

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Do you remember what fragrances you wore at different stages in your life? Recently, as I was reading Love, Loss, and What I Wore, in which Ilene Beckerman reflects on her life through clothes, I was inspired to do the same with perfume. Here’s my timeline of big moments and often big perfumes, starting back when I was 11 years old and sitting on a wooden porch swing at a house whose great green lawn swooped downhill past stands of lilac to the Narragansett Bay.

THE FIRST KISS: I’ve just finished sixth grade and have gone to a classmate’s end-of-school party.  I’m soon joined on the swing by a boy a year older than I am. I have a terrible crush on this boy.  Suddenly, the boy leans over and kisses me—my first!—and then urges me to come into the house to dance with him.  He rushes off into the house and I stay on the swing mortified, not by the kiss, but by dancing, which I consider to be geeky and uncool.  In a while, though, I wander into the house.  The boy is dancing with Linda Rose and never looks my way again.  I call my mother to come pick me up and once at home I put on her eyebrow pencil and Max Factor Hypnotique and I playact  that I am having cocktails in Paris.  Alone.

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Just like Tom Ford Noir, Sahara Noir is a perfect cross-over perfume and a good case for disregarding arbitrary gender marketing. In the case of Sahara Noir, you only need to love incense and amber. And love them a lot, because this perfume is incense and amber to the power of 10. A part of Tom Ford’s Signature Collection, along with Violet Blonde, White Patchouli, Black Orchid and Grey Vetiver, this is a dramatic and dark blend that delivers on its noir promise.

With Sahara Noir Tom Ford is courting Middle Eastern perfume consumers, whose tastes gravitate towards opulent. “A perfume can’t be rich enough,” says a friend who works for a fragrance company in Dubai. Incense is used to perfume homes and public spaces, and a splash of rosewater and a cloud of oud smoke begins and ends any auspicious function.  Sahara Noir would fit right into this scented environment and even hold its own. Depending on your tastes for heavy perfumes, consider yourself warned.

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