One summer evening in Kharkiv, I was writing a perfume review when the air raid sirens began. The sound was now part of the city’s fabric, as ordinary and as terrible as the smell of bread from the bakery on the corner. I paused, listened for the thud that might follow, and then turned back to my draft. A question pressed against me: What am I doing, writing about perfume as the world burns?
It’s a question I’ve asked myself many times over the past years. Perfume can seem like a frivolity, a luxury for calmer days. But the more I’ve lived through, the more convinced I am that it is not just a product. Perfume is a cultural layer, a record of our rituals, desires, migrations, and exchanges. It carries the memory of places and the touch of history on the skin. Every bottle is both a work of art and a fragment of anthropology.
Scent has always been part of our human story. Think of the rosewater used in Persian kitchens, the attars that traveled along the Silk Road, the citrus colognes worn by generations in Spain. Each carries not only a smell but also a history: of trade and craftsmanship, of gardens cultivated, of migrations and exchanges that shaped the world we live in today.
I think of the work of Aanchal Malhotra, the Indian author and oral historian who collects memories of Partition through the scents, tastes, and objects that people carried with them when they fled. Her books reveal how something as fleeting as a whiff of spice can hold the weight of loss, longing, and identity. Perfume is part of that same continuum, a sensory archive that can survive even when everything else is left behind.
In Ukraine, I’ve seen this cultural layer at its most poignant. Even in wartime, perfume shops remain open, their shelves lined with beauty. Some sell decants — small vials filled from the original bottles — making luxury accessible to those who can’t gamble on a full size. You decide and take home 2ml or 5ml. In those tiny bottles is not just a fragrance but a gesture: that beauty still matters, that life is worth embellishing.
Perfume is also a keeper of memory. I can open a vial and be transported to my grandmother’s garden, to a trip I took years ago, to a city I might never visit again in this lifetime. A perfume I wore in Odesa still carries the scent of the city’s acacias and the marine tang of its spring air. Like a letter or a photograph, a fragrance holds the past in suspension.
And perfume is art as a blend of chemistry, imagination, and cultural reference. A great fragrance is as carefully composed as a painting or a symphony. It speaks its own language, one that can be read on the skin and remembered in the mind.
So I keep writing. Not because perfume is a distraction from the world’s crises, but because it is part of the story of how we endure them. In the midst of destruction, people still reach for beauty — not despite the darkness, but through it.
Why do you enjoy scents?
Photograph by Bois de Jasmin, in The Rooster House scents evoke places and people and anchor memories. And there is a special story about Chanel No 19 that I will soon share with you.
43 Comments
Angela: What a beautiful post! I want to print it out and keep it on my desk. I love when a perfume tells a story all day, starting one way in the morning and taking on a totally different vibe by evening. It’s like a plot twist you can smell. August 11, 2025 at 9:05am
Nancy: I felt exactly the same way about printing this post out. Beauty, not despite the chaos, but because of it. August 11, 2025 at 3:29pm
Victoria: Nancy, that’s so beautifully said, beauty not in spite of chaos, but because of it. That captures exactly what I wanted to convey. August 12, 2025 at 11:27am
Victoria: Angela, I love your “plot twist you can smell” — what a perfect way to describe the life of a perfume through the day. August 12, 2025 at 11:26am
Alessandra: Wonderfully put. And I completely agree. August 11, 2025 at 9:12am
Victoria: I’m so glad it resonated with you. August 12, 2025 at 11:27am
Jason: First-time commenter here! I’m into scents, because they change my mood. Splash on some vetiver cologne, and I feel like I’ve got my life together, even if I don’t. August 11, 2025 at 9:19am
Victoria: Jason, welcome! I completely understand, scent can be like a secret reset button for the mood. Vetiver is a perfect choice. August 12, 2025 at 11:27am
Maria Perry: Thank you Victoria for this beautiful essay. Perfume as a memory keeper is so spot on. Just the other day, as I entered my grandmother’s centuries old house, I was sorely disappointed because there was a new electric fan and the smell of new plastic filled the room and engulfed all other smells. I immediately told my sister: “What is this smell? It’s ruining my olfactory memory!” She laughed and dismissed it, but I was really looking forward to that first smell upon entering the house. It will be forever one of my most precious memories. August 11, 2025 at 9:54am
Victoria: Maria, I know exactly what you mean, one new, intrusive scent can feel like it erases a whole world of memories. I hope that smell of your grandmother’s house finds its way back to you one day. August 12, 2025 at 11:28am
Lynne: What a perfect comment! Life is worth embellishing. August 11, 2025 at 10:33am
Victoria: Thank you, Lynne! August 12, 2025 at 11:28am
Carmel: Yes we need some nice treats in these ..strange stressful times . August 11, 2025 at 10:46am
Victoria: I agree, small treats matter more than ever in uncertain times. August 12, 2025 at 11:28am
WARA: Dearest Victoria, thank you for sharing these amazing thoughts, feelings, experiences with us💞 As the monstrosity of wars, corruption, trampling of human and earth’s rights happen on a daily basis…White Eagle, Hopi Elder gives us a warm embrace by reminding us “show resistance through art, joy, trust and love” perfume, colognes, balms, creams, incense…is a blessing of resistance for me…it is art, joy, trust and love available to help us daily so we can help ourselves and others. Thank you for all you do on a daily basis✨✨✨✨✨✨ August 11, 2025 at 10:56am
Victoria: Dearest WARA, thank you for your words and for sharing the Hopi Elder’s wisdom. August 12, 2025 at 11:29am
Michele O. Brown: Victoria:Michele Brown, I just received a paper tote full of South Carolina peaches. My Pastor Emeritus is from a little town not but a few miles from where I was born in So Car. The smell was so full of my constant longings for things to be the same and my Uncles acres and acres of trees full of plump peaches to still be there. They’re gone for good.😢
The daughters took them all out. Sold the walnut staircase with the wrap around railings upstairs. Sold the walnut fireplaces(7). They sold every piece of good wood from the interior of the house. Even the paneling in the pantry and kitchen. Then they stripped the exterior wood and sold that. Then they sold all The barns and the peach shed sorting equipment and it’s building and all the farm out buildings (wood shed, chicken coup, corn crib building, barn for all the plows and tractor), every last thing they could. Then the fire department came and burned the shell of the house and all the other buildings. It was such a terrible thing. They then divided the acreage into housing plots, constructed streets and curbs for the subdivision.
My mom and Dad were so upset. I was married and away at the time so didn’t know until we came home for a visit. My longing for the farm never goes away. Please forgive the long reply. I got started and just couldn’t stop describing my longings I hadn’t felt in yrs. Thank you dear girl for your patience with an old lady. Much love for your wonderful writings, knowledge and up dates on the world of smell. ❤️ August 11, 2025 at 11:07am
Victoria: Michele, thank you for sharing such a vivid, heartfelt memory — and loss. August 12, 2025 at 11:29am
Hamamelis: Beautiful writing, it brought a tear to my eyes. Besides all you write, for me it also has to do with the strength and endurance of women. Not to imply there aren’t many men enjoying perfume, but mothers and grandmothers passing on their love for scent, perfume, spices or flowers in the line of daughters seems timeless and in that way making a big stance against the disdain of beauty war brings.
I enjoy scents for many reasons: the essential yet fleeting nature they convey, and how they make both good and bad days better, the mindfulness they bring, how they involve the ‘fallen angel’ our nose and many more!
Wearing Rose Ikebana today, so deceptively simple and beautiful. August 11, 2025 at 1:35pm
Victoria: I agree, women’s quiet endurance, passed down through scent and beauty, is a powerful form of resistance. Rose Ikebana is a perfect emblem for that. August 12, 2025 at 11:30am
Nila: Thank you for this lovely post. Though I am not going through what you are presently experiencing, I am going through a period of my life where past and present press upon me and make me feel both regret and hope. Thanks to you I am reminded to express the beauty still within. August 11, 2025 at 2:22pm
Victoria: Nila, I’m touched my words could bring you that reminder. The beauty within you is part of the beauty that survives in the world. August 12, 2025 at 11:30am
Jennifer: Thank you so very much,Victoria. I have always felt that beauty is so important. Whether it’s artwork, music, writings of all kinds, food and the visual memories and the memories of scent. 4711 is one of my earliest memories of visiting my cousins and my grandparents, in Seattle. It was a small, folded paper towel, encased in a foil packet.It must have been in a motel’s bathroom. It conjures up the memories of this visit when I was three years old. August 11, 2025 at 2:32pm
Victoria: Jennifer, thank you for sharing your 4711 memory. Such small details carry entire worlds within them. August 12, 2025 at 11:30am
Neva: Perfume is consolation and memories to me.
I remember when we had our war here in Croatia beginning of the 90-ies, everybody had a bag next to the apartment door and we took it with us every time we went to the shelter during air raids. It contained important documents, underwear, a few clothes, a water bottle, medication, etc…I always had one or two perfume bottles in the bag. August 11, 2025 at 3:23pm
Victoria: Neva, your story moved me deeply. Carrying perfume in a shelter bag says everything about the human need for beauty, even in the darkest times. August 12, 2025 at 11:31am
Filomena: I agree with everyone that this is a beautiful post. I also find perfume to be calming and enjoyable, especially during theses terrible times. August 11, 2025 at 4:03pm
Victoria: Thank you, Filomena! Perfume can be a quiet form of solace. August 12, 2025 at 11:31am
Simone: Such a beautifully written post! I frequently doubt and question myself over perfume’s impact — over whether it is something worth pursuing in an ever-changing world. However, it is always a comfort to apply a vanilla fragrance regardless of what the day has in store :”) August 11, 2025 at 6:44pm
Victoria: Yes, perfume might not change the world, but it changes how we meet the world each day. August 12, 2025 at 11:31am
Hana: Beautiful article! For me, perfume is an invisible and subtle expression of my personality, even on days filled with work and responsibilities. It reminds me that I am somewhere there, too. I also like how discussions about perfumes are nicely irrelevant, so each of us can appreciate different scents or dislike them altogether, and it doesn’t matter at all, it’s just about the enjoyment 🙂 August 12, 2025 at 5:00am
Victoria: I like how you put it: perfume as a reminder that “I am somewhere there, too.” And yes, the irrelevance is part of the joy, it’s a space where everyone’s preferences can simply coexist. August 12, 2025 at 11:33am
Klaas: Thank you Victoria. Life is worth embellishing, always. As long as we keep on whistling songs on the street, putting ribbons in our hair, doing walz-steps in our living rooms and dabbing drops of perfume in our necks, the bad guys don’t win everything…..
Art and beauty are an act of resistance, I agree. August 12, 2025 at 5:52am
Victoria: Yes, exactly this. Those small, defiant gestures keep a piece of the world ours, no matter what happens outside. August 12, 2025 at 11:33am
Karen A: Oh Victoria, what a beautiful post! Thank you. Beauty does still matter and life is worth embellishing! Scents are such strong links, to the earth- the fragrance of dry hard clay getting soaked by rain, roses in the early early misty morning, pipe tobacco being smoked. All ties to my past that can be brought forth through perfumes. August 12, 2025 at 5:46pm
Victoria: Thank you, Karen. Your words moved me. Yes, beauty does still matter, and it’s these very scents you describe so vividly that remind us how deeply rooted we are in our own stories. August 18, 2025 at 5:26am
Linda: Thank you, thank you, thank you for continuing to write about perfume. August 13, 2025 at 1:50pm
Victoria: Linda, thank you for reading. August 18, 2025 at 5:27am
J. Vaughan: I appreciated this blog post today. I’ve moved countries because of (waves hand around at all of this), and packing my perfume collection (and the luxury to be able to do so) was evocative. When I wear them in my new country, I’m taken back to very specific memory-places, so there are some I’ve temporarily rotated out because I simply can’t wear them. August 15, 2025 at 5:14am
Victoria: I completely understand. I’ve experienced that same ache, the way certain scents become too loaded, too immediate. August 18, 2025 at 5:27am
John Luna: Thank you for this wonderful article — I’ve been meaning to read it for the past week and thought of it two days ago when I met with an artist friend for coffee…Both of us have spent time in the U.S. (we are Canadians) and often talk, rather grimly, about politics and the challenge of making art and (for her) running an art school. She asked what I was up to and I told her I was looking for a publisher for a book of poetry about perfume. I was surprised that a certain embarrassment was gone that had stalled the project during COVID. Something has shifted. I’m also surprised, returning to edit them over the past two weeks, how political some of them have become. Coming to this article right after reading your newest one (which I also loved), I’m excited to see you weave such an urgent humanism into a talk about something so aesthetic as perfume components, that, in online reviews, so often is flattened into some kind of commercial discussion. I hope one day these thoughts become part of a new book — I know I’m not the only one who has found a lot of hope in them. August 15, 2025 at 11:52am
Victoria: John, your comment stayed with me. What you describe — the shift, the quiet lifting of embarrassment, the return to poetry — is so meaningful. I’m heartened that you saw something human and urgent in the piece. You’ve given me much to think about, and I truly hope you’ll keep going with your book. The world needs more of that kind of work. August 18, 2025 at 5:28am
Climacraft: This was an informative read. The attention to fragrance notes and elegance perfectly reflects what modern luxury perfume lovers are looking for today. May 25, 2026 at 8:51am