There is no reason to keep citrus, white florals and other effervescent blends only for the summer month. As Elisa explains, they’re as perfect for the winter as they are year-round.

I’ve written the top 10 list for the past three winters, and both last year and the year before, I focused on traditionally seasonal perfumes – rich orientals and boozy ambers and gourmands. It’s true that in winter, I reach for my heavier perfumes about 5 days out of 7. But at least once or twice a week, I’ll get a craving for something that’s not very wintery at all, and on “cheat days” my out-of-season perfumes feel like a special treat by contrast to the usual fare.

Below are ten of my favorite perfumes to wear when I feel like cheating on winter.

Clarins Par Amour Toujours – We usually associate citrus with summer, but December is actually peak grapefruit season! Par Amour Toujours looks cute and harmless in the bottle, and there is some pink rose in there, but more pronounced is the invigorating grapefruit, bolstered by a blackcurrant note so green it’s almost piney.

Pinrose Treehouse Royal – There’s nothing like blackcurrant to cut through the fog of winter. Its pungent sweetness serves as a kind of palate cleanser after too many days of heavy, smoky orientals. Treehouse Royal is a great find – similar to Byredo Pulp, but much more affordable, it’s a bright mix of currant and fig, with a clean drydown like musky soap. Continue reading →

A few years ago I asked your opinion on the most versatile perfumes in your collections, or what fragrances you reached for when you couldn’t decide what to wear. My reader Hamamelis asked if I could run the poll again, and here it is.

Please share fragrances you think are the most versatile. I will update this post with your top 5 selections. My own answers will be in the comments.

Audrey Hepburn: An out take from the photo shoot for the cover of the April 19, 1954 international issue of Life magazine. Photo by Mark Shaw. Please see Mark Shaw Photo Archives for more of his elegant photography.

Thank you very much to everyone who participated in our Doctors Without Borders fundraiser. Together we’ve raised $7,150. Thank you for your generosity and thoughtfulness. Also, a big thank you to Limegreen, Bregje, Rebecca and Reg for the extra prizes they’ve contributed.

To select the winners, I assigned each participant a number and then made a selection via a random number generator in the following order:

Diorissimo–update on 1/29: re-drawing the winner, because the first winner never responded and my emails bounced back. So, the new winner is Farrah.

Diptyque Volutes (Rebecca’s prize, barely used bottle)–the winner is Therese

Chanel No 5 parfum (Limegreen’s prize, barely used bottle)–the winner is Jane

Serge Lutens La Fille de Berlin–the winner is Kay

Chanel Coco 50ml (Bregje’s prize, 95% full)–the winner is Dana

Since Reg is based in the UK and couldn’t mail her bottle outside of the country due to the regulations, I randomly selected a winner for Reg’s prize out of the UK participants.

Chanel Cristalle (Reg’s prize, vintage bottle, used)–the winner is Lucy

Added 1/22/2016: we also had an offer of a samples package from my reader Linda. I randomly selected a fundraiser participant, and the winner is Diana.

Congratulations! I will get in touch with you this week.

Our standard contest reminder: I reserve a right to select another person if the original winner doesn’t respond within 7 days.

One of the best things I tasted in Iran was a cookie. On the tray next to the rosewater flavored walnuts, almond baklava, salty dried cherries and pistachio nougat, little pale rounds topped with poppyseeds looked the least impressive of the lot. But when I bit into one biscuit, and it melted into buttery cream in my mouth, I was instantly smitten. That’s how I discovered rice cookies, Nan-e Berenji, the classical Iranian pastries.

Nan-e Berenji has a delicate sablé-like texture and a rich perfume of cardamom. Throughout my trip, I looked for this simple confection in every town I visited, but none have rivaled the version I found in Yazd, a city famous for sweets. Yazdi rice cookies were the same golden color as the adobe walls of the ancient town, and a simple shape belied their decadent flavor.

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I like pink. It’s one of the most intriguing and unpredictable colors–cheerful and aggressive, uplifting and alluring, delicate and tawdry. Pink in its pale, ballet slipper manifestations can seem precious and dainty, but saturate it–or contrast it–and the effect becomes much more subversive. Move anywhere outside central Europe, and pink’s reputation for girlishness and frivolity begins to appear less certain. Already in southern Spain and Italy the simple coquetry of this shade turns seductive and smoldering–in the hot pink of the matador’s cape and flamenco skirts, the Sicilian church frescoes and the intensity of bougainvillea against the chipped white stucco of Moorish palaces. Forget about pink being just for debutantes when in India; real Indian men wear pink. The intense tropical  sun bleaches pastels to nothingness, but pink holds its own, forcefully.

The monochrome January palette needs an infusion of brightness, so my interest in things rose and fuchsia colored is correlated with the length of winter. This is probably why by the time spring arrives and the beauty magazines insist on pastels, I instead turn to greys and ambers. Pink can find its many expressions, in perfume, blush, lipstick, and it need not be only about roses.

Consider Frédéric Malle Geranium Pour Monsieur. The polished woods and musk would give it a sober air of an Oxford don, if it weren’t for a vivid geranium boutonniere. It’s bright and dramatic, an interplay between geranium’s green metallic and velvety floral notes. Pour Monsieur uses a particularly intense geranium essence, and I see it as shocking pink, nothing delicate about it.

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