Victoria: 2669 posts

Happy Thanksgiving! Hope that everyone is enjoying a nice holiday break. My reader Eliza asked if I could poll you on your most versatile perfumes, the ones that you can wear anytime, anywhere, summer or winter. I thought that it was a fun question, so I would love to find out.

Some of my favorite choices would be Guerlain Après L’Ondée, Chanel No 19, Serge Lutens Iris Silver Mist and Bois de Violette, 4711, Atelier Cologne Orange Sanguine, Hermès Osmanthe Yunnan, Olfactive Studio Lumière Blanche. I can wear these perfumes anytime, rain or shine, and they always feel just right.

And of course, you can use this space for our usual Scent Diary, sharing fragrances you encounter, good and bad, perfumes you wear and the scents around you.

Photography by Bois de Jasmin, the central square of Brussels, Grand Place, beautiful even on a rainy day.

Does luxury need to come with a big price tag? If you take a stroll around any department store, you might come away with that conclusion. But if your shopping strategy is more of the Poirot sleuthing variety, then you can turn up some affordable gems. My local India shop doesn’t fall under any definition of upscale. It’s a tiny, overcrowded space that smells pungently of cumin, wilting coriander greens and fried snacks. But it is here that I discovered my favorite soap of all, Mysore Sandal Soap. And it cost me 1.95 euros.

Mysore Sandal soap is produced by Karnataka Soaps and Detergents Limited, a company owned by the Government of Karnataka, a southern Indian state famous for its sandalwood. Mysore sandalwood groves were plentiful at the turn of the century, but while Europe was engulfed in the First World War, the precious wood couldn’t be exported. In 1916, the Maharaja of Mysore established a company to use up the excess sandalwood, and Mysore Sandal soap still remains the company’s trademark. It bears a proprietary Geographical Indication seal and contains natural sandalwood oil.

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While I’m back from my travels, our itinerant perfume box is starting its own journey. This time it goes to Snowyowl. Snowyowl, please contact me, so that I can put you in touch with Kate.

Once you receive your package, please sample everything to your heart’s content, keep a couple of samples and replace the ones you’ve taken with your own samples. If you’re new to making samples and decants and packaging them for shipping, please see this article.

Please take notes on what you’ve smelled, what you liked, didn’t like, etc. It would be great for all of us to learn from each other and just to have fun smelling together.

When you’re ready to let the box go (ideally, within a week or two), please contact me with the list of samples in the box and your perfume notes. This way, everyone, regardless of whether they’ve participated, can follow the adventures of the box. I will post a draw and select the next destination out of the responses via a random number generator.

Due to the restrictions on mailing perfume and possible customs fees, it may be hard for some of you to ship worldwide. So, if anyone wants to start their own traveling perfume box within a specific region, please let me know.

Bois de Jasmin is not responsible for the boxes lost, stolen, held by customs or damaged. 

So, the first of our perfume boxes is continuing its travels, and Kate is now ready to pass it along to another person. Below, Kate is including her sampling notes and the list of perfume samples in the box. So, if you are in the US and would like to participate, here is how you can do it.

How does it work: To enter, please answer these questions: 1) are you in the US? ; 2) do you agree to pass the box onto someone else (and share your sampling notes with the rest of us)? and 3) what perfume are you wearing today and why did you pick it? Bois de Jasmin is on its fall break next week, so the thread is going to be open till we return on Monday, November 24th. I will pick the next box recipient via a random number generator.

When a winner is ready to pass the box onto someone else, they should get in touch with me. Please include the list of samples and your sampling notes (what you’ve discovered, what you’ve liked/disliked, any observations you care to include).

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The news of Frédéric Malle selling his Editions de Parfums house to Estée Lauder reminded me that I haven’t gotten around to writing about one of the most intriguing fragrances from his collection, Portrait of a Lady. Why intriguing? Well, consider the name. If it brings to your mind the cool elegance of Henry James’s heroines, then you’re not alone. I also expected something along these lines–ultra refined, sophisticated and feminine. Except that it is all wrong. Portrait of a Lady is interesting precisely because the scent is not at all what you expect. It’s a twist on a Middle Eastern theme, and it’s not all that lady-like.

If you’ve already smelled traditional Middle Eastern perfumes or western blends inspired by them (Amouage, Kilian’s ouds, Armani Privé Rose d’Arabie), then you might recognize similar elements in Portrait of a Lady. It has a generous dose of classical “oriental” notes–sandalwood, amber, patchouli, dark woods smoked over incense, and of course, rose. It has a similar dramatic and mysterious character that makes this perfume genre so distinctive.

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