In Your Opinion: 314 posts

“Why do you want to take my picture?” “You look so beautiful with these flowers, and they are the same color as your eyes.” “Oh, bless you, you’re making me blush.”

I can’t pass by the sidewalk sellers without at least glancing at their wares, and almost always I leave with a purchase: wild strawberries that smell of caramel and orange blossoms, a bunch of herbs for tisane tied with a string, or plums covered with a mottled silvery patina. When I saw this cornflower seller on a busy street in Kyiv, I already knew I couldn’t resist the temptation. And you know, cornflowers smell wonderful–green, earthy, with a subtle peppery note.

Our Scent Diary is a place where we can share fragrances we encounter, good and bad, perfumes we wear and the scents around us. It’s a way to sharpen our sense of smell, but also just to enjoy the fragrance hobby in a different way.

Whether you write down 1 recollection or 10 matters less than simply reminding yourself to smell. You can add as many comments as you wish. You can comment today or over the course of the week; this thread will always be open. Of course, do share what perfume you’re wearing or what particularly good scented products you’ve discovered.

Photography by Bois de Jasmin

This week is a holiday for my American readers as they celebrate the 4th of July, and for me, it’s a week of family activities in Ukraine with my grandmother and my mom–going for walks together, watching movies, talking, and of course, cooking. You might remember the cherry blossoms during my May visit, and now, all trees are covered with jewel-like fruit. I’ve already set my sights on a tree near the hammock for harvesting this week. There will be brioche buns with cherries, cherry strudel, cherry compote, and chicken in cherry sauce. And of course, my grandmother’s “royal cherry jam”. I will smell of cherry juice and my fingers will be permanently stained purple from pitting pounds of dark fruit.

While I’m pitting cherries and collecting scent impressions around Poltava, my grandmother’s hometown, our Scent Diary is here (Bois de Jasmin’s reviews and articles will be back on Monday.) It’s a place where we can share fragrances we encounter, good and bad, perfumes we wear and the scents around us. It’s a way to sharpen our sense of smell, but also just to enjoy the fragrance hobby in a different way.

Whether you write down 1 recollection or 10 matters less than simply reminding yourself to smell. You can add as many comments as you wish. You can comment today or over the course of the week; this thread will always be open. Of course, do share what perfume you’re wearing or what particularly good scented products you’ve discovered.

Photography by Bois de Jasmin

You already met Annette when she hosted a generous perfume giveaway for us to mark her 60th birthday. She’s a writer and a fragrance lover, and at one point she sent me the photos of her grandmother’s perfumes. In the course of our exchange, she shared her family story, which was too fascinating to be left in an email thread. So, I invited her to tell the story on these pages. When people ask me “why perfume?” I want them to read stories like this. Because scent, like few other things, can conjure up the past and make us dream.

I’m too sentimental for my own good. At least, that’s what some people think. But don’t we have to have some sentiment in our lives, if only to keep a memory intact?

My grandmother was born in Moscow, Russia in 1900. Sometime after the Revolution of 1917 her family went to their little summer home in Odessa, Ukraine, where they could grow food to help them survive. There she later met and married my grandfather, a businessman who’d come to the U.S.S.R. from Greece by way of Asia Minor. My mother was born in Odessa in 1925 and sometime in the late 1920s she left the U.S.S.R. for good. And there the Russian part of the story ends for me.

Leaving Russia with very few of her own things, my grandmother made a new life for herself in Greece.  She had to learn a new language, and a new way of doing things, in a very different climate, but her love of my grandfather and her stubborn tenacity saw her through.

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Elisa on summer favorites

Here in the US, we tend to fight the heat with cold – in the South, that means the AC is always blasting and there’s as much ice in your glass as there is tea. When I lived in Houston, I’d routinely leave a restaurant with goose bumps all over my body, and for a moment, the 100-degree heat outside would feel delicious.

Elsewhere, though – in India, along the equator – people often fight fire with fire, drinking hot tea and eating foods so spicy your scalp prickles with sweat, thus tripping the body’s internal cooling mechanisms.

I prefer the American method when it comes to food and beverage (I’ll be drinking iced coffee until the first snow). But when it comes to perfume, both strategies appeal. Some days I reach for crisp, refreshing colognes, but other days, I crave notes like musk, incense, and narcotic flowers that bloom and billow in the heat.

Cold Perfumes for Summer

Diptyque Philosykos

Wearing Philosykos, the quintessential fig fragrance, you naturally get all the suggestions of lying under a shade tree – green leaves, sweet wood, milky sap. But there’s something in the fig materials that also reminds me of air conditioning chemicals, so a spray of this on a hot day is like a subliminal stroll past the vents of a swamp cooler.

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Bois de Jasmin will return on Tuesday, June 24th. Today we have our “Recommend Me a Perfume” thread. You can use this space to ask any questions about perfume, including fragrance recommendations. If you’ve asked for a recommendation before, please let us know how your search went and what you’ve discovered.

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