Victoria: 2669 posts

750,000! That’s how many flowers it takes to cover Brussels’s central square, the Grand Place. Every other year a carpet of colorful begonias is laid out in the historic city centre, the vibrant and extraordinary spectacle that turns the plaza into a fairy tale vision. It’s not hard to embellish the Grand Place, which is often voted as the most beautiful square in Europe. Ornate Baroque guild houses and Gothic town hall buildings line its periphery, and side streets bearing names like ‘butter’, ‘cheese’, ‘herring’, etc. reflect its origins as the main marketplace of old Brussels. Today the shops are still around, although most of them hawk chocolates and tacky souvenirs. But the Grand Place retains its majestic aura, and it’s easy to understand why this place is still one of the busiest tourist sites in the city.

I first visited the Grand Place on a cold winter day when the square was all but empty. Like much of Brussels, its beauty left a strange impression on me of something grandiose, but aloof. It took the flower carpet for me to see Brussels in a different light–more colorful and more joyful. What a delightful thing it is to block the main square for several days just to decorate it with thousands of petals! All this for a few evanescent moments of beauty.

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I love Amouage, a unique perfume house that has created some of the best fragrances in the niche category. Amouage Gold is not just a grand parfum, it’s one of the best perfume symphonies.  The Jubilation duet blends wistful loveliness with edgy glamour. Wearing both Lyric perfumes, I finally grasp how it is that ‘bold and dramatic’ can also be ‘elegant and suave.’  Homage Attar transforms the lavish Middle Eastern oud and rose idea into a wearable but nevertheless sumptuous variation. Interlude, on the other hand, leaves me cold.

The fragrance opens with a sharp green, leafy note that smells at once like paint thinner and lawn clippings. It’s a bold move to overdose a fragrance with this rough and raspy note, and for a while it keeps my interest. After all, the diesel fumes that crown the top of Serge Lutens Tubéreuse Criminelle are similarly hard on the nose, but it feels like a natural part of the tuberose in the composition. Here, the green notes layered over the woods and incense feel jarring.

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Take Thierry Mugler Angel and dilute it with sheer, lemony jasmine till all you have left are the pastel colored outlines of the original gourmand patchouli. Shake it up, label Yves Saint Laurent, and you have Manifesto! I complained that Lancôme La Vie Est Belle is unexciting, but next to Manifesto it’s downright avant-garde.

My qualm with Manifesto is not that it’s a bad perfume, but that it doesn’t have much character. Smell it once, smell it ten times, I guarantee that you won’t remember it. Of course, not every single fragrance needs to make a statement–mild, unobtrusive blends do have their place, but Manifesto could be inside any bottle: the latest celebrity launch, Escada, Calvin Klein, Coty, Avon or even Bath and Body Works. It’s not entirely clear what makes this perfume Yves Saint Laurent. It doesn’t have the bravura of Opium nor the voluptuous beauty of Paris. It lacks the sensuality of Cinéma or the moodiness of Nu. It smells trendy, like a scent you’ve noticed  many times before at the mall or inside a crowded subway car–a cotton candy laced patchouli, with a soft blur of flowers.

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What do you bring back from your travels? What are your favorite souvenirs to pick up on your vacations? If you’re planning a vacation this summer, what perfume are you packing along?

Since I’ve just moved, I haven’t accrued any vacation time, but I’m making up for it by setting aside time to explore my new country. And while I still get bouts of intense homesickness, I’m slowly finding things to enjoy here. The ease of travel is one of them, and in the past couple of month we’ve taken lots of car trips. Every time we visit some new place, I try to bring something back.

My favorite souvenir is anything that can give me sensory enjoyment long after I return from the trip–perfume, food, books, beautiful fabrics, and of course, photos. I have a growing collection of honeys from different places. My spice collection can almost rival my perfume wardrobe. Each morning as I take out a jar of orange blossom honey I bought in California (yes, I actually packed my Californian honey with me!) or reach for a whiff of sandalwood oil I found in India, it’s like a little memento of my adventures.

Photography by Bois de Jasmin

I just discovered another reason to like Belgium, and it’s a modest looking place called Place Vendôme Haute Parfumerie. Modest applies only to the exterior of this perfumery located on a quiet street in the town of Wevelgem, one hour south-west of Brussels. Inside, it’s an Ali Baba’s cave of the most exclusive niche lines and fragrance classics. The store is owned by David Depuydt, who along with his team has been in business for the past 21 years.

I found out about Place Vendôme by chance via a friend who raved about the customer service and the jewelbox ambiance of the store.  Similar praises were lavished upon the boutique by both the perfume historian Elisabeth de Feydeau and Guerlain’s creative director Sylvaine Delacourte. Although Brussels lags behind New York and Paris in terms of perfume shopping, fragrance isn’t hard to find in Belgium, where even the cosmetic shops like Ici Paris XL and Planet Parfum carry Serge Lutens and small lines like Kenzo, Rochas, and Tom Ford. A couple of weeks ago my husband proposed to visit the trappist abbey at Westvleteren that brews a particularly sought after beer. Since the abbey’s limited distribution of their beer rivals that of Serge Lutens bell jars, we decided to combine our interests in one trip. We’re a family of geeks, what can I say.
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