I came to Iran through literature and language. Long before I traveled across the country, I had been reading Persian poetry, studying the rhythm of the language, and trying to understand a place that cannot be approached through headlines alone.

Traveling in Iran deepened that early fascination. I encountered a country of immense cultural density: hospitality and restraint, beauty and endurance, tenderness and control. Iran’s politics are complicated and often painful, and the present moment makes this impossible to ignore. All of the friends in Iran I have been able to reach speak of unimaginable violence and loss. Nearly everyone knows a young person who was killed.

After everything I have experienced in Ukraine, I did not think I could still be shocked. Yet with every new story, I understand more clearly the depth of grief and suffering the country is moving through, often without witnesses. It is precisely in moments like this that reading matters: not as escape, but as a way to resist simplification, to remember that no country can be reduced to crisis alone.

This reading list brings together books from my library. These books are an attempt to understand Iran not as an abstraction or a crisis, but as a layered, ancient, and profoundly human place.

Essentials — where to begin

The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat
A foundational modern Iranian novel. Dark, hallucinatory, and deeply psychological, it explores alienation, obsession, and the fracture between inner life and social reality. Demanding, but essential.

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One of the best discoveries during my recent trip to China finding the vibrant indie perfumery scene. While I expected to see established brands employing famous international perfumers, the bold experiments by independent artisans came as a surprise.  One such example is Passion Chypre from L’Atelier Möbius.

L’Atelier Möbius is a small house run by a perfumer, Lorenzo, together with his wife. Passion Chypre is one of several fragrances in his collection, which ranges from florals to amber. As the name promises, passion fruit is the star of the composition. Tropical fruits can be unruly, tending to drift into overripe, even rotten territory. Here, passion fruit is huge, bold and sweet. Fruit to the power of ten.

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I’m writing this from a perfumer’s studio in Ternopil. I’m reviving myself with coffee while Sofiya and I smell new indie launches from Shanghai.  On my wrist is Lapot Studio’s Narcissus, a mosaic of white petals, cool earth, and green buds. In this dim light, it smells almost luminous. I’m in Ukraine for the rest of the year, working, researching, and writing. I’ll be documenting the journey on my Substack—quick dispatches from the road, and longer essays that weave together Ukraine’s everyday reality with the craft of perfumery.

For those following along, look for:

5 Fragrances to Understand Modern Perfumery

The First 50 Materials for Your Perfumer’s Palette

My Rituals to Stay Focused

Guerlain Shalimar at 100: the anatomy of an icon

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. If you received recommendations from this thread, please let us know what you sampled.

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

Shanghai sample raffle (newsletter-subscriber exclusive): the winners are Marc, Adrienne, Lee, Aurélie, Jonah. I’ve contacted you via email.

Now and again, walking down a street in Paris, I catch a whiff of Shalimar. According to the latest bestseller lists—compiled by companies whose entire business rests on the arcane practice of counting doors and tracking fragrance sales—Guerlain Shalimar remains among the top ten best-selling perfumes in France. If that is true, then excellent. Few perfumes deserve to be worn, loved, and admired as much as Shalimar.

What makes Shalimar extraordinary is its paradox. It is sumptuous, yet startlingly modern; ornate, yet almost linear in its construction. One could even call it a precursor to the Sophia Grojsman style: a bold block of high-impact materials, softened and ornamented with delicate flourishes.

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For the past twenty years, Bois de Jasmin has been my home. It has grown with me on countless journeys through perfumery, cultural curiosities, writing, and life’s unexpected turns. Many of you have been reading since the early 2000s; others joined along the way. All of you made this space what it is: a place shaped by scent, curiosity, beauty, and thoughtful conversation.

As I prepare for my upcoming trip to Ukraine and work on a new project, I feel the pull toward a different kind of writing, deeper, more personal, more expansive than a traditional blog format easily allows. Which is why, after much deliberation, I finally created a Substack, Bois de Jasmin Circle.

So what is my Substack about?

In short:

It’s a space where creativity, scent, and culture help us survive chaos, told through my journeys in Ukraine and around the world. As a journalist, I’ve worked in and written from conflict zones, and those experiences changed how I understand beauty, ritual, and the role of creativity in dark times.

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