Join Luca Turin and me for a live online seminar on new perfume launches, industry trends, and insider observations from the fragrance world. Luca will be joining us from Milan during Esxence, the world’s largest niche perfumery exhibition. I will be speaking from Ukraine.

Scientist, critic, polymath, and co-author of Perfumes: The A–Z Guide, Luca needs little introduction. Expect lively discussion, strong opinions, and plenty of opportunities for questions.

This event supports a cause close to my heart.

Since this spring, I have been working with the Kramatorsk Volunteer Organization in eastern Ukraine, helping evacuate civilians from frontline communities. The team is made up entirely of local volunteers. They receive no salary. Their leader, Bogdan Zuyakov, works at a local music school and spends his free time organizing evacuations, transporting hospital patients, and helping people escape the war zone.

I join the team’s missions whenever I am in Kramatorsk, and I have seen firsthand how vital this work is. As the front advances and drone warfare expands the danger zone, the window for evacuation is shrinking.

Unfortunately, one of the team’s vehicles recently broke down. Without vehicles, evacuations stop.

Together with my fellow volunteer Ben Kochenburger, we have already raised more than $10,300. We are now just $4,700 away from our goal of $15,000, which will allow us to purchase a replacement vehicle and keep these missions running.

Spend an hour talking perfume with Luca Turin—and help keep a lifesaving evacuation vehicle on the road.

Event Details

Friday, June 5
17:00–18:00 CET
11:00–12:00 EST
Zoom

How to Participate

Donate $50 or more to the fundraiser: https://gogetfunding.com/humanitarian-support-for-relocating-civilians-in-ukraine/

Everyone who has already donated $50 or more is automatically eligible and will receive a Zoom invitation before the event. Be sure that you enter your email address, so that we can contact you.

A recording will be made available to the registered participants.

If you are unable to contribute, sharing this post would be a tremendous help.

It’s not every day that a conversation about perfume helps to save lives.

Luca’s Substack: https://lucaturin.substack.com/

You can follow the reports of my work with the Kramatorks Volunteer Organization via my Substack or Instagram.

I’m back in Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine. We had 110 hours of air raid alerts over the past week  alone. I’ve learned to sleep through the blaring sirens. I’ve seen what drones and mines can do to a human body. I’ve smelled the smoke and tasted ash on my lips. Against it all, life continues relentless. Every day a new flower blooms on the sidewalks and a new bud unfurls its sticky leaves. An apricot tree embracing the wall of the old synagogue blooms in such a graceful way that it looks like a Japanese painting of itself. The skies during the blackouts are full of stars so vivid and bright that they seem within reach.

I travel to the frontlines. I volunteer on the evacuation missions. I record people’s stories. And I make time to smell violets in the park, wear perfume and teach fragrance classes. I continue writing my Substack newsletter. Your support enables me to continue my work and help here in Ukraine.

74 Perfumes We Had to Learn by Heart at IFF

5 Things That Stayed With Me in February

Three Mini-reviews of New Perfumes (short videos)

Perfume Class 3: Structure, Tension, and Control

What I Learned From Memorizing 74 Classics

The Art of Seduction: Field Notes from a Perfumer and a Former Ballerina

Victoria Reading Map: Iran

Our “Recommend Me a Perfume” thread is open this week. You can use this space to find perfume recommendations, to share your discoveries and favorite scents, and to ask any questions about scents, aromas and flavors. Or you can just tell us what perfume you are wearing. If you received recommendations from this thread, please let us know what you sampled.

How does it work: 1. Please post your requests or questions as comments here. You can also use this space to ask any fragrance related questions. To receive recommendations that are better tailored to your tastes, you can include details on what you like and don’t like, your signature perfumes, and your budget. And please let us know what you end up sampling. 2. Then please check the thread to see if there are other requests you can answer. Your responses are really valuable for navigating the big and sometimes confusing world of perfume, so let’s help each other!

To make this thread easier to read, when you reply to someone, please click on the blue “reply” link under their comment.

Photography by Bois de Jasmin

Iris is an ingredient that almost always sways me, and yet the more iris fragrances I smell, the harder it becomes to be genuinely surprised. Iris is among the most complex materials in perfumery, whether natural or reconstructed. It originates from the rhizome of Iris pallida, and its scent moves effortlessly between contrasts: violet petals and frozen roots; green buds and powdery floral softness. It is elegant and ethereal, yet anchored by a strong, unmistakable core. That is precisely why Iris Hermit by Lapot Studio felt like such a revelation when I discovered it in Shanghai. It gave me my iris ideal type when I least expected it.

What struck me immediately was the texture of the iris. Soft, but not vague. Delicate, yet not fragile. There is a beautiful opalescence about it, like the pale interior of an oyster shell, smooth, luminous, and quietly sensual. The iris is gently cushioned by light peachy nuances that add a hint of sweetness, while green accents shimmer through the composition. Notably, there is no overt woodiness anchoring the scent. Instead, the structure feels suspended, airy, and finely balanced.

Continue reading →

I started my year reading Hafez. As I read, I made notes how many times this Persian poet mentioned aromas. My notebook was so brimming with ideas that I jotted down a simple formula for a rose fragrance inspired by his verses. I will share the idea soon.

In the meantime, my Substack newsletter has the following new pieces:

Quentin Akigalawoodovich Bisch

Perfumer Error #1: No Theme

Five Things That Stayed With Me — January

Perfume Class 101: The First Materials to Buy

Perfume Class 101

If Sei Shōnagon Lived in Kharkiv

Our “Recommend Me a Perfume” thread is open this week. You can use this space to find perfume recommendations, to share your discoveries and favorite scents, and to ask any questions about scents, aromas and flavors. Or you can just tell us what perfume you are wearing. If you received recommendations from this thread, please let us know what you sampled.

How does it work: 1. Please post your requests or questions as comments here. You can also use this space to ask any fragrance related questions. To receive recommendations that are better tailored to your tastes, you can include details on what you like and don’t like, your signature perfumes, and your budget. And please let us know what you end up sampling. 2. Then please check the thread to see if there are other requests you can answer. Your responses are really valuable for navigating the big and sometimes confusing world of perfume, so let’s help each other!

To make this thread easier to read, when you reply to someone, please click on the blue “reply” link under their comment.

Photography by Bois de Jasmin

I came to Iran through literature and language. Long before I traveled across the country, I had been reading Persian poetry, studying the rhythm of the language, and trying to understand a place that cannot be approached through headlines alone.

Traveling in Iran deepened that early fascination. I encountered a country of immense cultural density: hospitality and restraint, beauty and endurance, tenderness and control. Iran’s politics are complicated and often painful, and the present moment makes this impossible to ignore. All of the friends in Iran I have been able to reach speak of unimaginable violence and loss. Nearly everyone knows a young person who was killed.

After everything I have experienced in Ukraine, I did not think I could still be shocked. Yet with every new story, I understand more clearly the depth of grief and suffering the country is moving through, often without witnesses. It is precisely in moments like this that reading matters: not as escape, but as a way to resist simplification, to remember that no country can be reduced to crisis alone.

This reading list brings together books from my library. These books are an attempt to understand Iran not as an abstraction or a crisis, but as a layered, ancient, and profoundly human place.

Essentials — where to begin

The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat
A foundational modern Iranian novel. Dark, hallucinatory, and deeply psychological, it explores alienation, obsession, and the fracture between inner life and social reality. Demanding, but essential.

Continue reading →