13 posts
October, when the veil between worlds is said to grow thinnest, is dedicated to nostalgia and lost loves. From an old diary to a childhood room of porcelain dolls and a romantic boudoir, three powdery fragrances: Kenzo Flower Ikebana Indigo, Moth and Rabbit Dolls, and Guerlain L'Heure Bleue.
From Roja's bright Amber Aoud and Dior's ceremonial Oud Ispahan to Lattafa's caramel suede and Tom Ford's Tobacco Vanille: fragrances that show how oud, leather, woods and smoke can be luminous or sombre, tactile or architectural.
Leather, oud, woods and smoke were long coded as masculine, yet none of them belongs to one gender. A look at what these dark notes really are, how oud travelled from Southeast Asia through the Gulf into Western luxury, and how leather softened into suede.
September invites us to a classic British country estate. From the gentlemen's library to the kitchen hearth and up to the lady's boudoir, we meet three fragrances for the turning of the season: Zoologist Beaver Maple Edition, Les Néréides Casse-Noisette, and the discontinued Mugler Angel Garden of Stars La Rose Angel.
The gender binary in fragrance isn't natural - it's roughly a hundred years old and built on arithmetic. A look at the history, the science, and what happens when you stop reading the label before you smell the thing.
Vanilla is all too often reduced to sweetness, and that is perhaps the greatest injustice ever done to it. A guide to the orchid, the molecule and the six principal forms of vanilla, followed by fourteen perfumes read for the face of vanilla each one wears.
August is summer at its fullest: golden grain, heavy fruit trees, herbs perfuming the meadows. Three perfumes for the abundance of high summer and the first harvest: Bee by Zoologist, Un Jardin à Cythère by Hermès, and Rose Jam by Lush.
Four thousand years of lavender - from Egyptian tombs to Esxence 2026. The chemistry, the history, the supply crisis, and why it's the most misunderstood note in perfumery.
This July, let a British summer seduce you. Following in Jane Austen's footsteps, we settle by the Albion coast with three refined green florals housed in flacons worthy of a novelist's dressing table: Penhaligon's Daphne Bouquet, Santa Maria Novella Fresia, and Parfums de Marly Delina.
Three aesthetic senses: stillness, movement, and individuality reveal your inner identity.
June pulses with midsummer sensuality, the season of Kupala Night magic and fragrant flowering fields. Let me seduce you with three of the most carnal perfumes for warm evenings: Givenchy L’Interdit Rouge, Jean Paul Gaultier Scandal Intense, and the discontinued Mugler Aura.
For years, perfume discourse has leaned on a lazy hierarchy: Western designer fragrance is framed as the source material, Arab perfume is framed as the imitation.
