Aedes de Venustas is a niche’s niche. A brand developed by Karl Bradl and Robert Gerstner, the owners of the eponymous New York artisanal perfume boutique. In collaboration with several renowned perfumers, they’ve released Aedes de Venustas Eau de Parfum, Copal Azur, Iris Nazarena, and Oeillet Bengale, all four standing out in the crowded niche field. The fifth launch, Palissandre d’Or, likewise has much to recommend itself.

The concept is a new take on woods. Palisander, rosewood, is a precious variety, with a bright, crisp aroma that doesn’t resemble a wood as much as a flower. At the same time, it has sharpness and vigor, ideal qualities to weave into woody and oriental perfumes. Rosewood, on its own, is not a common theme, however, so Aedes’s decision to let it strike out solo is brave. Even more so is the request to perfumer Alberto Morillas to make it new and modern.

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This spring will be the 10th for Bois de Jasmin. When I created it in 2005, the blog was meant to be an online repository for my perfume musings, and that others wanted to read them remains a pleasant surprise. These days Bois de Jasmin garners around half a million monthly views, and it has evolved to include topics such as art, food, science, literature, dance, economics, and politics. This eclectic approach reflects my conviction that fragrance doesn’t exist in a cultural vacuum. Far from being an unnecessary frivolity, a “trivial feminine” pursuit, it’s an integral part of our environment, and the whole subject of scents and the way we connect to it mirrors other trends in our society. Perfume lovers today are lucky because we’re in a moment of unprecedented interest in fragrance, and we will see more manifestations of this fascination in new books, blogs, products, research, and discussions.

Another reason for Bois de Jasmin’s varied content is the diverse nature of our community. The conversations here are made possible by all of you. I love receiving your comments and letters, hearing your suggestions, giving you my own, and sharing my discoveries, whether they may be a perfume gem, a great book, a skincare tip or an interesting recipe. So a big thank you to all of my readers, visitors, and commenters. Of course, a special thank you to my co-authors. Andy, Elisa, and Patricia, you’re my muses and friends.

This past year has been a period of intense reflection for me, as I was trying to make sense of some traumatic events, and I realized that Bois de Jasmin had an older distant sibling. I was going through my family archive, and among the sepia photographs with their sharp serrated edges, stacks of my great-grandmother’s letters, and copies of various documents, I found a bulging notebook, so thick that the leaves risked splitting from the faux leather blue cover. It has been years since I’ve flipped through it, but I recognized it right away.

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Elisa on Safari, a ’90s classic with an ’80s spirit.

The ‘80s were a time that fetishized “adventure” – I grew up watching movies that took a page from Heart of Darkness, portraying Americans or Brits confronting the terrifying Other-ness of primitive African, Asian, and aboriginal cultures. Today’s audiences would find most of these films (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Crocodile Dundee, etc.) unwatchably offensive, and rightly so; their cultural moment has passed.

Ralph Lauren Safari, composed by Dominique Ropion, was released in 1990, but feels to me like an ‘80s scent (cusp years cling more tightly to the previous decade than the following, I’ve found). As a concept perfume, it perfectly fits the adventurist trend, and I associate those striking Bridget Hall ads that I saw in every magazine as a kid with the old Banana Republic stores. (If you’re younger than me, you might not remember that their stock in trade at the time was khaki shorts and branded t-shirts, not pinstriped office-wear.)

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My grandmother’s Easter bread is a lacy confection of butter and sugar. Glazed with chocolate and decorated with flowers, it looks like a Byzantine mosaic. Redolent of bitter cacao and violets, it doesn’t just smell good. I realize with a thrill that it smells like a complete perfume–the top note of violet, the heart of hazelnuts and wheat, and the lingering backdrop of musky chocolate. Take this idea, refine it into an accord–a combination of several perfume notes that becomes more than the sum of its parts–and voila, you can use it to create a new gourmand genre. Sounds fanciful, but this is how perfume is made.

On the face of it, it seems as if the gourmand genre has captured every dessert, from crème brûlée (Aquolina Pink Sugar) to cupcakes (Vera Wang Princess), from rice pudding (Tommy Hilfiger True Star) to raspberry macarons (Guerlain La Petite Robe Noire). You can have your chocolate with cinnamon (Pacifica Mexican Cocoa), with caramel (Thierry Mugler Angel), or with honey (Tom Ford Noir de Noir).

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Some fragrances have great top notes, others tempt with you a gorgeous drydown, but without a beautiful sillage, the pleasure of wearing them is nil. The French word sillage refers to the perfume trail you leave behind, a spell cast on others as well as you. Martin Margiela’s Lazy Sunday Morning is nice enough on paper, but to fully experience the sheer chypre, you need to try it on skin. If you’re lucky to have a friend who wears it, you can experience how well Lazy Sunday Morning diffuses and the soft, gauzy wake it leaves behind them.

Of course, this is true for many perfumes, which are composed of volatile essences, with unique rates of evaporation. This unromantically sounding idea, of molecules floating off your skin at different speeds, is what creates each scent’s aura, its melody and form. The intriguing aspect of Lazy Sunday Morning is that it’s part fresh cologne and part rosy chypre, oscillating between vivid aldehydes and dark moss, velvety rose and bitter patchouli. This interplay, well-modulated by musks, orange blossom, and green notes, is what gives this perfume its layered effect.

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