My most profound scent experience of 2013 happened as I walked down an avenue lined with linden trees not far from my apartment in Brussels. Suddenly I smelled the Kiev of my childhood–the heavy odor of wet asphalt, honeyed lindens and gasoline, and the longing to see my family gripped me  so intensely that I cancelled a pending seaside vacation and instead traveled home. That trip to Ukraine started a series of other visits and other quests.  Several months later as I was having a cup of tea–incidentally, it was linden from my great aunt’s garden–with a cousin I knew only from my parents’ stories, I realized that this year I’ve been on a linden trail.

While experiences like my linden triggered journey don’t happen often, all of my favorite perfumes transport me out of the routine of my day and spark fantasies. In making my best of 2013 list, I included the most interesting fragrances I’ve encountered, but also the ones that made me dream. Patricia and Elisa will also share their favorites below.

Marni

Marni charmed me instantly. I loved its combination of rose and Indian incense, its quirky accents of ginger and cardamom and its lingering drydown of patchouli. The notes are rich and heavy, but the interpretation is sheer and effervescent. It’s a skin scent, rather than a perfume that announces your presence a mile away, but it has plenty of character.

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Today’s article is brought to you by Ann. After buying a set of Scent on Canvas samples, she was so excited about the perfumes that she asked me if she could share her favorites with you. Ann is a seasoned perfume lover, and she has been wearing fragrance ever since she was a little girl. Pine scented bath beads, Prell shampoo (circa 1970), and her grandmother’s 4711 Eau de Cologne were among the first scents Ann remembers. As a teenager, she began to venture beyond her stash of samples and hand-me-down perfumes to her own flasks, sometimes owning as many as three at a time. Then a couple of years ago, Turin and Sanchez’s “A to Z Perfume Guide” crossed her path and she stumbled upon perfume blogs… and so began her uninhibited daily adventures with beauty and art just an arms-length away.

If perfumes tell stories, then why not illustrate them? New niche perfume company Scent on Canvas has set about to do just that with their five fragrances, Rose Opéra, Brun Sicilien, Noir de Mars, Ocre Doré, and Blanc de Paris. “Our aim is to unite the arts of the perfumer with a pictorial creation,” says owner and perfumer Béatrice Aguilar-Cassarà. On the website she explains that fragrance notes were given to artists, who in turn created art to match the scents, which were then named after color pigments in the paintings. Next, a color engraving was made of each work for reproduction in a limited number of boxes in which the perfume is packaged.

I was drawn to the multimedia nature of the project that combined art and artists, perfume and perfumers, and business and marketing. However, when my package of five samples arrived from Barcelona along with charming scents strips in the shape of paintbrushes, I decided to just focus on the scents without the distraction of the companion art. It turned out to be an adventure with some unexpected turns.

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Today we have our “Recommend Me a Perfume” thread. The whole month of December my kitchen smells of spices as I bake cookies scented with honey, cardamom, cinnamon and orange zest. I enjoy the process of mixing the spices as much as the cookies themselves, and so whenever I have a spare moment, I’m cutting out gingerbread hearts and dipping honey cakes in chocolate.

Bois de Jasmin wishes you Merry Christmas! We will return on Thursday, December 26th, to unwrap presents, share some of our latest perfume discoveries and tally up the year.

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 how your search goes and 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

Elisa on roses, moss, and brocade.

Some perfumes take only moments to love, but years to understand. Such was the case for me with Une Rose Chyprée, a perfume from the indie line created by Andy Tauer. From the first sniff, I knew it was special. But I struggled to grasp why or how. It was not, to my nose, a chypre (a mossy-woody blend) at all. It was not of the sharp, haughty variety like Paloma Picasso; not chilly and green like Yves Ssaint Laurent Y or Chanel No. 19; not, like the more recent Agent Provocateur, saffron-sour up top and musky-dirty at the bottom. So what was it, then?

After spending a few years with his collection, I realized that Andy Tauer’s true muse is amber. And Une Rose Chyprée is not a straight chypre but an amber in conversation with a mossy rose, melding into its bittersweet floral-herbal personality, but not losing its own round, full, and resinous scent.

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When you watch snowflakes swirling outside your window on a grey November afternoon, it’s hard to imagine that somewhere else there are flowers blooming and citrus trees laden with golden orbs. On the southern coast of Italy, Calabrian bergamot farmers are preparing to collect fruit, and for most of the month, the air in Reggio Calabria will be thickly perfumed with a peppery citrus essence as bergamot rinds are processed into essential oil.

Although we usually encounter bergamot as essence perfuming our cologne or Earl Grey tea, the fruit itself is a marvel. It has a heady aroma, and it tastes exactly the same way it smells–spicy, acidic, with a hint of green jasmine. It’s much sharper than lemon but also more complex and fragrant.

Bergamot juice can be substituted for lemon in marinades, sauces or dressings. Imagine poached salmon with bergamot mayonnaise or bergamot-basil pesto rubbed over pork chops. The juicy flesh can be tossed with salad greens, onions, and parsley to accompany grilled meat or seafood.  But in Calabria and much of southern Italy, bergamot usually ends up candied or in a jam. Bergamot jam is one of my most vivid memories of southern Italy, and whenever I get a chance, I recreate it at home.

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