summer scents: 3 posts

I came back from the market the other day with a big bouquet of cornflowers and as I sat admiring their vivid color, I realized that these blue flowers are my quintessential summer blossom. Their scent is delicate, green, slightly musty, but the fascinating aspect of olfaction is how such subtle aromas can evoke strong memories. I smelled cornflowers and I could see the wildflower meadows of Poltava, the region in Central Ukraine where I spent the first 15 summers of my life. I could smell the watermelon, feel the sticky peach juice on my fingers and catch a whiff of my great-grandmother distilling rosewater. Being unable to travel there makes me more nostalgic–and renders the familiar scents more intense. Instead of being melancholy after smelling cornflowers, as one might imagine, I felt rejuvenated and uplifted.

This experience inspired me to focus my new video on my favorite summer perfumes. I reflected on what fragrances I gravitate to in the summer and why. While the exact perfumes might change year to year, the main idea stays the same–I wear fragrances that feel refreshing in warm weather and that evoke the pleasant idleness of a good vacation.

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Have you ever wondered why some perfumes feel cooling, giving you a refreshing sensation, and others produce little effect, despite being dosed with classical fresh ingredients like green leaves or citrus? In my recent piece for the FT magazine, Mint Scents for High Summer, I explain this phenomenon and suggest several fragrances that are cooling.

Citrus, green leaves, tart fruit and lily of the valley are all described as cool scents, but only a few aromas are actually cooling. The difference may seem subtle, but while a cool perfume merely evokes pleasant associations, a cooling one has an instantly refreshing effect. One of the most crucial cooling ingredients is mint. Menthol, the main component of mint essence, triggers the cold-sensitive TRPM8 receptors found in the skin – a curious trick that is responsible for the icy burst one experiences when drinking a mint julep. To continue reading, please click here.

What about your favorite cool or cooling scents? And what perfumes have you been wearing lately?

Photography by Bois de Jasmin

Lindens have long finished blooming. They seem so distant, the early summer days when the city was filled with the fragrance so sweet and rich that I felt like I was wading in honey and even when I would return home, the perfume clung to my skin, my hair, my clothes. These days linden trees stand green and splendid, with no trace of blossoms on their branches. And yet, I can still smell the linden fragrance. I only need to ponder about it for a moment to conjure up the heady summer days and the lindens.

I always regret seeing the linden blooming season come to an end. It’s one of the summer highlights for me, especially so given its brief duration. While it lasts, I try to imprint the linden perfume in my memory to keep it as a souvenir for later. The appeal of scents is in their immateriality, their intangibility–and in the way they can be retained in your mind to inspire you later.

Wrapping up these reflections, I wanted to share with you a song I love. It’s called Spring (Vesna), and it’s performed by a Ukrainian band DakhaBrakha, one of the most innovative and original music groups. They use traditional songs in modern arrangements, and “Vesna” captures the season’s moods, from effervescent to mellow.

Photography by Bois de Jasmin