Our “Recommend Me a Perfume” thread is open this week. You can use this space to find perfume recommendations, to share your discoveries and favorite scents, and to ask any questions about scents, aromas and flavors. Or you can just tell us what perfume you are wearing!

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

I already shared that I will be visiting Germany to speak about Ukraine and my book The Rooster House. I also would like to ask you for your recommendations on what to visit and see in Berlin, Munich and Leipzig. I’ve been to Berlin and Leipzig before, but this will be my first trip to Munich.

Below is my program for these three cities. After I return from Germany, I will be going to Tallinn and Copenhagen for the book events. I will share more details closer to the date.

Continue reading →

One of the most interesting principles in Japanese garden design is the idea of borrowed scenery, shakkei. Using existing landscape elements—distant mountains, ponds, and neighboring structures, a creator would plan the garden in such a way as to incorporate the surroundings into her composition and create her personal vision of nature. Perfumery is generally more about artifice and fantasy, but as summer fades, I too become inspired to borrow autumnal scenery for my fragrant accompaniment. My perfume choices become led by the scents of fall.

Even in the deodorized urban environment, autumn is a fragrant season. The moment that leaves start to fall, the air is filled with a mellow sweetness reminiscent of walnut shelves and faded leather. On my way to the metro, I take a roundabout way through a park, kicking the golden leaves and glossy chestnuts with the tip of my boots. On my scarf I carry Serge Lutens’s Chypre Rouge, a perfume that smells of maple syrup and bittersweet moss. Or I might select the delicate Bulgari Eau Parfumée Au Thé Rouge, an infusion of tea, ripe figs and maple leaves.

Continue reading →

I will be in Germany from October 18th to 26th teaching a writing seminar and talking about Ukraine and my book The Rooster House. I will be visiting Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich, and Leipzig. I hope that I can meet some of you during my visit.

October 18th, Frankfurt

Frankfurt Book Fair, Ukrainian Collective Stand/ Hall:4.1. Stand: B

16:00-17:00
The Rooster House: My Ukrainian Family Story
Victoria Belim (Writer, journalist, translator, and fragrance specialist). Moderator: Kyrylo Beskorovainyi (Co-founder of Kunsht).

Ukrainian Book Institute, Goethe-Institut, U.S. Consulate General Frankfurt

In 2014, the landmarks of Victoria Belim’s personal geography were plunged into tumult at the hands of Russia. Her hometown, Kyiv, was gripped by protests and violence. Crimea, where she’d once been sent to school to avoid radiation from the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, was invaded. Kharkiv, where her grandmother Valentina studied economics and fell in love; Donetsk, where her father once worked; and Mariupol, where she and her mother bought a cherry tree for Valentina’s garden, all became battlegrounds. Victoria, by then a naturalized American citizen then living in Brussels, felt she had to go back. She had to spend time with her aging grandmother and her cousin Dmytro. She had to unravel a family mystery spanning several generations. And she needed to understand how her country’s tragic history of communist revolution, civil war, famine, world war, totalitarianism, and fraught independence had changed the course of their lives. A young woman’s quest to uncover her family’s difficult past reveals broader truths about the present conflict. Victoria Belim’s memoir is a personal history of her family’s turbulent past and a celebration of Ukrainian identity. The German translation was published as “Rote Sirenen. Die Geschichte meiner ukrainischen Familie“ with Aufbau Verlag.
Continue reading →

I prepared a different article for today over the weekend, but when I spoke with my cousin in Israel and learned some of her friends ended up among the people held hostage, I didn’t have any motivation to finish my original piece. My cousin was crying and unable to talk and I didn’t know what to say to comfort her. We are not a religious family, but we ended up praying together, wishing for this suffering of innocent people to stop.

Those who have read The Rooster House know that I have family in Israel. My cousin left Ukraine in the early 1990s and eventually my uncle Vladimir, my father’s oldest brother, joined her. Vladimir was a fascinating character who drives the story in my book–and who inspired my interest in photography and Ayurveda. I have shared previously in Boy With a Fotokor how as a bedridden child suffering from the consequences of polio, he experimented taking photos of his surroundings. He created a large archive of images that are the most vivid captures of the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

Continue reading →