Mid-Autumn Festival is on Saturday, September 10th, and I already envision brewing a pot of tea and admiring the full moon in the evening. Some years the weather doesn’t cooperate, and the temptress moon hides behind the clouds, but when it reveals its full splendor, the effect is magnificent. The pearly moonlight makes the sleeping city shimmer and the skies turn a deep blue color, with soft whispers of grey.

My moon-viewing is incomplete without mooncakes, pastries filled with lotus seed paste or red beans, and an appropriate perfume. The latter is particularly important to set the ambiance and add more magic to my evening. Below are my seven choices, for both men and women.

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Incense is one of those materials that changes its character depending on what else is present in the formula. It can be bright and peppery or dark and smoky. It can even evoke the verdancy of spring buds. Incense is one of the most incredible ingredients used in perfumery. Before I describe a few fragrances to illustrate how incense is used as a fresh note, first a few words on what we mean by incense. Typically, perfumery incense is frankincense or olibanum. It’s sourced from the Boswellia species, most commonly found in countries like Sudan or Ethiopia. In its raw form incense comes as opaque lumps of resin that are called frankincense tears, and the tears need to be further processed into essence.

The scent of raw frankincense is peppery and vivid, and one of the easiest ways to enjoy it is to put one tear into a glass of water and leave it to infuse. The taste of such incense water is refreshing and bright, with a spicy edge.  The closest equivalent in fragrance is Serge Lutens’s appropriately named L’Eau Froide, which explores the bright nuances of frankincense.

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It’s a pleasure to share with you that my memoir, The Rooster House, will be published in English on June 27th, 2023 by Abrams Press. The book tells my family history across four generations as I search for traces of my great-uncle who disappeared during the 1930s, and explore Ukraine’s complex relationship with its Soviet past. It’s also a story about family ties that survive conflicts and turmoil.

As the publication date nears, I will share more details. In the meantime, here is a publisher’s summary.

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 violent suppression. 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.

A naturalized American citizen then living in Brussels, Belim 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.

The Rooster House is a beautifully written memoir of a family, a country’s past, and its dangerous present. It is about parents and children, true believers and victims, gardens and art, secrets and tragedy.

You can pre-order on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

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A major industrial center on the River Rhine, Cologne may not seem like a place with a fragrant history, but it was here in July of 1709 that Giovanni Battista Farina founded the company “G. B. Farina” and began to sell fashionable Italian goods from his native Piemont. When Johann Maria, Giovanni’s younger brother, joined the company in 1714, he developed a perfume that he called “Aqua mirabilis” or “miracle water” and that he named Eau de Cologne or Kölnisch Wasser in honor of his adopted city.

The fragrance was based on Italian essences of bergamot and lemon. Fresh, bright and effervescent, it was a break from the heavy perfumes of the period that featured dark musk and civet. “My fragrance is like an Italian spring morning after the rain,” was Johann Maria’s description of his Eau de Cologne, and this fantasy was so compelling that soon the perfume was much sought after. Mozart wore it and so did Napoleon. Oscar Wilde ordered it and Queen Victoria was a fan with a purchase order of over 600 bottles.

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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, immortelle