“Being almost completely blind, I have always used my nose as a means to investigate and love my world, so it is no surprise that I became a perfume addict at an early age,” says Shermeen, our guest author today. She shares her experience of using her nose instead of her eyes. “Although I would have loved to have pursued a career in the fragrance industry, I enjoy indulging in it as an obsessive hobby. I studied law and live in Southern Ontario, and when I’m not using my legal background to persuade myself into buying more perfume, I enjoy reading, writing, singing, drinking loose-leaf tea, and travelling when I’m able.”

When people first learn that I’m almost completely blind (which is often instantaneously, since I’m often accompanied by a gigantic yellow dog), one of their first questions is invariably along the lines of “So are your other senses, like, heightened?”

Yes, I can hear, smell, and taste things you probably didn’t even know existed. I know you had garlic bread yesterday morning, that your kid spilled a bowl of cheerios on your pajamas last night, and I bet you can’t even hear that fire engine blasting its way down your street as you read this (how many of you looked out your window to check?)

Continue reading →

Le Palais des Thés has launched a collection of non-caffeinated teas based on fruit. Each blend includes pieces of dried fruit, herbs, and flowers.

Jardin Suspendu is fresh and acidic. It’s a blend of apple, orange & orange peel,  hibiscus flowers, rosehip peel, lemongrass, cornflower petals, sunflower petals, rose petals, mallow petals, and notes of mango and bergamot.

Jardin Tropical is sweet and tropical. It blends mango, pineapple, papaya and peach with rosehip peel, lemongrass, and cornflower petals.

Continue reading →

Although I indulge in plenty of fantasies of spending summer by the sea, preferably a tiny fishing village where I would have nothing to do but read books and gaze onto the blue waves, every August I find myself in the city. With everyone rushing to the coast in search of their own summer fantasies and with airfares skyrocketing, I just create my own city vacation. I take long walks, experiment with my photography and just enjoy the strange calm of a European city during the summer break.

I turn to perfume to make my city summers feel more tropical. In principle, cologne is the most refreshing choice on a hot day, but I hardly ever reach for citrus in the summer–gloomy winter mornings are another story. Instead, my perfume wardrobe blooms with white flowers–Marc Jacobs for Her, Annick Goutal Un Matin d’Orage, Frédéric Malle Carnal Flower, Chanel Beige, and now, Terracotta Le Parfum.

Continue reading →

When people smell civet, natural or synthetic, for the first time, the natural response is to cringe, because this animalic material smells raunchy, dirty and sweet. My husband recoiled from me in horror when I once returned from the lab having spent the day working mostly with animalic notes. These days, on the other hand, nothing fazes me now (except, perhaps, for the material called Pineapple Compound that turns air entering my lungs into fruity, sticky cotton candy.) Scents, like tastes, can be acquired.

These days I even like some odd scents that ordinarily wouldn’t be considered pleasant, like mildew, mild skunk odor, hot metal, musty basements or wet paper. And I love civet in all forms.

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; my grandmother is getting ready to prepare varenyky, dumplings stuffed with a variety of offal. It’s an acquired taste, but I absolutely adore this dish and its gamey, musky flavor, and I request it every time I visit.

Elisa on what gives perfume a cult status.

What makes a fragrance a “cult fragrance”? It’s not enough for a perfume to simply be popular; bestsellers like Coco Mademoiselle and Light Blue don’t qualify. A cult fragrance needs obsessively devoted fans, while remaining a little mysterious and under the radar. Thus its fans can form a kind of counterculture – they understand something that the general population does not.

So what enables a perfume to develop a small but intensely devoted following? The following criteria certainly help:

• The perfume is hard to find – it’s a limited edition, discontinued, only available online or in Europe, etc.
• The perfume has a love-it-or-hate-it quality; there is something weird or off-putting about it on first sniff, which some people end up finding addictive.

Sometimes only one or the other is true, but when both are true, you have the making of a cult fragrance on your hands.

If you read perfume blogs, you’re bound to hear about these cult fragrances over and over. With some of the below perfumes, the descriptions I read gave me desperate lemmings; they haunted me until I found a sample. With others, just the opposite was true – I actively avoided them, fearing their notoriety would make them hard to love or worse, easy to hate. Here they are in the order I managed to try them.

Continue reading →