Scents That Remind Me Of Chinese Lunar New Year And My Singapore Home

If you saw the movie Crazy Rich Asians you got a glimpse of Singapore, the setting for the story. It hinted at the vibrancy of this modern city, referred to fondly by locals as The Red Dot, and although only five times the size of Manhattan it packs a great deal of diversity of cultures and experiences into its small footprint on the map. Chinese Lunar New Year is an  exciting time to be in Singapore when the streets of Chinatown are festooned with decorations, savory treats symbolic of the holiday are offered for sale, and parades and fireworks offer amazing punction marks to finalize the celebration. It has been a little over a year since my husband and I left Singapore which was our home for fourteen years. During Chinese New Year the large population of expats leave the city to take advantage of time off from work to experience one of the myriad vacation locales nearby, emptying the city and leaving it to the locals for the holiday. My husband and I always stayed, enjoying the space that the exit of a couple of million people brought to the streets, and enjoying the colorful festivities. This will be my second year to miss the festivities but there are certain scents that bring thoughts of my time spent in Singapore back.

If I was looking for a specific perfume to recommend to capture the sights and smells of Chinese New Year it would contain the smell of gunpowder which hangs heavy in the humid air as the fireworks explodes in a dazzling display and as the small red strings of firecrackers sold all throughout Chinatown release their acrid smell with a pop, pop, pop. I don't have any such perfumes in my collection, so instead I will talk about some of the scents that bring me back to the many happy years I spent in Singapore with just one sniff.

Buddah Tooth Relic Temple, Chinatown, Singapore. Https://cityseeker.com

First up is Chang Chang by En Voyage Perfumes. Perfumer Shelley Waddington created this perfume in 2012 as part of the Cosmologie Collection. My recollection is that this was part of a joint project between several indie perfumers to make perfumes based on the various elements of fire, water, air, earth, but I don't see any mention of this so perhaps I am remembering this wrong. On her website Ms. Waddington says that Chang Chang was inspired by the element of fire, specifically the sun, and is meant to express the bold elements of summer.

I own several En Voyage creations: Poete de Carmel, Fiori di Bellagio, and the whole Souvenir de Chocolate collection, but I only have a sample of Chang Chang. My sample is several years old and down to the last drop and because of its age I think it has lost the opening note of blood orange that I vaguely remember. The other opening notes are marigold and solar notes, heart notes of summer blossoms in sweet cream, and base notes of white wood and musk. I am not sure what "solar notes" are but the effect they impart to my nose is a certain warmth. This warm effect is heightened with the very distinct smell of marigolds and a sweet cream richness. Marigolds are a much more revered flower in all parts of Asia than in the Western world, where prettier, more delecate flowers seem to get the attention. The bright colors of marigolds grace the alters of both Buddist and Hindu temples and their smell, which I believe mostly comes from their stems, is sharp, pungent, and slightly acrid. They also smell dry and a little dusty.

The way Ms. Waddington combines the scent of marigold with the very strong scent of sweet cream is a very unusual combination and brings one of my sharpest scent memory moments in relation to Singapore. When I smell Chang Chang I get an immediate image of visiting the Chinese temple, and even more so the Hindu temples in Little India. As you approach you would see a thousand little flickering flames from tiny candles. Some were tea lights but often they were little stubby candles which formed molten puddles of wax as they shrank into a waxy pile beneath the flame. Around the flames would be flower offerings of jasmine or marigold, but the marigold in particular had the more pungent aroma in this setting. Chang Chang brings this image to life for me, the creaminess of the melting wax and the pungency of the marigolds carefully placed by the candles. It is such a strong image that I don't think I could ever comfortably wear this scent because I am so overcome with this visual. However, other reviewers comment on the feelings of the warmth of sun, summer blosssoms, and an exquisite creaminess that the perfume gives them. It is an extremely unusual scent, and the one that has the most specific memory tied to it for me.

Bond No. 9 Chinatown is a romanticized version of a stroll down the crowded lanes of Chinatown in Singapore, or any other city where their is a Chinatown. I love its peach opening which is plush and sweet but before it can turn to candy Chinese five spice powder notes give some spicy feistiness to the scent. Gardenia and tuberose notes enter to give a floral sensuality but peony will eventually overpower these flowers and merge with the peach to give an exuberant and joyful fragrance celebrating the revered place peonies hold in Chinese lore.

From a Singapore-based artist, www.Louise-Hill-design.com

Chinatown was the very first scent I wrote about on this blog, in part because it was a perfume that catapulted me into a serious love of scent. This perfume keeps transforming into something new on my skin, and really captures the sensation of strolling by the stalls of a Chinatown market. Here are some ripe fruits, here are some plush peonies, now we have a shrine with candles burning and dissolving into waxy trails with scents of paraffin and honey. Rosewood boxes emit a rich scent of wood and mystery. All these scents meld together to form a thread of scent that I can only describe as Asian and which instantly reminds me of all the years I lived in Singapore and other ports of call in Asia. Chinatown will always be a top perfume love of mine, not just because I love the scent but because of how it takes me on a time travel trip through chapters of my life that I longingly remember.

Another part of my scent memory of Singapore involves the beautiful scent of flowers from the many beautiful green spaces. Twice a year the jasmine bushes on my street would burst into bloom and an evening stroll was likely to turn into a euphoric smell experience. We lived in close proximity to the Singapore Botanic Gardens and in season after the sun set and evening dusk fell, the scent of jasmine would drift through the air like a stealth cloud of blissfulness, leaving gorgeous but fleeting scent trails in its wake. It was the very fact that this scent was hard to capture that made it so alluring. You could walk right up to a bush and bury your head amongst the tiny star like white blooms and smell....nothing. But two hundred feet away you might be surrounded by a cloud of green-jasmine-laced scent so strong that you wanted to sink to your knees in a swoon. One scent that has come close to capturing the beauty of these moments is Grandiflora's Madagascan Jasmine.

Grandiflora Fragrance is the brand of Saskia Havekes, Sydney-based florist and perfumer, who teamed with Perfumer Michele Roudnitska to present this realistic interpretation of Madagascan Jasmine. Technically this is really stephanotis, a jasmine varietal, but here it is a fresh and sweetly innocent representation of the jasmine bloom. It begins with touches of green, like the tender stem and stamen of the blooms. The white floral scent is creamy and sweet, and really does smell as if of nature. I have other realistic jasmine scents but what makes this one really special is it holds on to that opening beautiful jasmine note and doesn't let go. When I smell this I'm carried back to walking down my Singapore street. It was less than a quarter mile from busy Orchard Road with its tall modern buildings full of designer stores, yet our street was like living in a little village. It had a quirky Chinese grocery shack, a dirt floored 7-11 if you will, with his chickens roaming down our street and behind the high iron fence was a hidden gambling den for local taxi drivers. One building housed a small nursery school with the pleasant chatter of children playing within its confines. Small modest homes siddled up to the home of a millionaire. Even in the midst of the city we were surrounded by towering green crowned trees and tropical birds that would do fly bys from the nearby Botanic Gardens. The warm temperate night, the crescent moon hanging in the inky sky, the ever present humidity that seemed to amplify the scents of the night; all these images flow back when I smell Madagascan Jasmine.

From www.inkandadventure.blogspot.com

When I first saw Singapore in the late 1980s it seemed to me an exotic and foreign place. There were wet markets where one bought groceries in outdoor stalls, Sunday puppet shows on street corners, and higgledy-piggledy laneways lined with Asian shophouses. The Raffles Hotel, which today can cost $1000 a night, was a crumbling relic with screen doors and falling-apart lawn furniture where one could sit and order a Singapore sling. It reeked of faded granduer, but Singapore was in the early stages of a metamorphis. Historic buildings were being torn down to make way for modern skyscappers. Along the river little hawker stalls and huts gave way to a polished new mall area of restaurants and bars to attract tourists. Through the 1990s it seemed that all traces of old Singapore would disappear. I wasn't there at the time but at some point the powers that be must have realized that they were loosing the hodgepodge of historical buildings that made Singapore unique and charming. Today there are still pockets of Singapore where you can find narrow shophouses converted to restaurants and boutiques, with their long shuttered windows and hanging lanterns speaking of a bygone era.

The perfume that perfectly encapsulates this experience for me is Tom Ford Fleur de Chine. Although Fleur de Chine is a limited edition that came out in 2013 and is mostly sold out online -- Sephora had it up until about six months ago but doesn't seem to now --  I still see it on many counters such as Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus, but it is becoming increasingly scarce. To avoid ever having to worry about running out in my lifetime I sprang for the big 250 ml size. I tried this when it first came out, and to date the four in this Atelier d'Orient collection remain my favorite limited edition line ever released by the brand.

“For Fleur de Chine, I imagined the romantic and mysterious women from Asia’s cinematic past – from the ’30s femme fatale in a cheongsam and dark lipstick, to the ’60s Hong Kong heroine of In the Mood for Love. I wanted to capture that fascinating, exquisite and slightly scandalous feminity.”

– Tom Ford

I've looked at other reviews online and my experience is quite different from many of theirs, some of whom seem to experience Fleur de Chine as a white flower perfume. For me it is so much more complex. There are moments when it feels like an aldehyde perfume, then a chypre, then a no-holds-barred green scent. From the first moment I tried this back in 2013 the mixture of florals, wood notes and sharp green notes in the scent spoke to me of retro scents from a more romantic age. There was something about it that was distinctly Asian in feel to me, whether it was from the hinoki wood or the peonies, I'm not sure.

The perfume feels large and dense at first but quickly becomes something more manageable and with a scent cloud contained to my direct vacinity. There are creamy florals, in particular magnolia. Plum and peach add a rich deep fruitiness that is dry in texture. Styrax influences the oriental feel of the perfume, lending a spicy note that is further amplified by the benzoin and amber. Hyacinth adds to the feel of green notes that wash through Fleur de Chine. There are so many notes: tea, hinoki wood, peony, rose, wisteria. Most of the notes blend together in manner of fine French perfumes and in structure Fleur de Chine wears like a momento from the past, but perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux, who just may be my favorite perfumer, managed to impart a thread of Oriental mystique that makes me reimagine my Singapore home every time I wear Fleur de Chine.

These are just a few of the perfumes that remind me of my many years spent in Singapore and in particular, the festivities celebrated there.

Top photo: www.China-family-adventure.com. Perfumes are from my own collection.

Perfumes to Wear for Halloween

This weekend before Halloween is the traditional time to throw parties for those long past the age to go door to door for candy. Here is a look, all in fun, of what perfumes to wear for Halloween!

Vert de Fleur by Tom Ford

A green so dark it is almost black. Sinewy, bitter, and poisonous. Twisting, smothering green, pungent and sharp. An earthy and fierce opening, which fades to something tamer as time progresses. Notes: galbanum, iris, hyacinth, neroli, bergamot, basil, jasmine, vetiver, patchouli, oakmoss.

Vlad Dracul by Sixteen92

You are entering a forest. It is dark, dank, and misty. You smell the fir needles that have fallen to the path, padding it with a softness that muffles your footsteps, and maybe the footsteps of those watching from the shadows. The needles and leaves are rotting and decaying, moist from the rain on dark paths that never see sunlight in the depths of the forest. Suddenly you sense something, actually you smell it. It smells like disturbed earth, something ancient. A smell that attracts you at the same time it repels. It's too late. He's come for you. You fall in the depths of the verdant earth, that wet leaves, and the scent of the long dead. Notes: Carpathian fir needles, red cedar, black amber, black patchouli, scorched earth, blood musk.

Bat by Zoologist Perfumes

You are in a limestone cave, the wall oozing dampness and wet to your touch as you glide your hand along the surface to find your way in the dark. There is the smell of vegetation that clings to the walls, surviving on the filtered shards of sunlight that penetrate the depths of the cave in the lightest part of the day. Suddenly there is an animal smell mixed with leather. You can see nothing but you sense the movement of a hundred thousand tiny flapping wings as the bats rush past you for the nightly ritual of the hunt. Notes: soil tincture, fruit, fig, green notes, musk, leather, vetiver, sandalwood.

Oud Immortel by Byredo

They move among us and pass as human. But if you are still and mindful, you can know them by their scent. It is dry like the papyrus tomes in which their history is written. Just as the trees which make oud are infected with mold which over the course of time forms a seductive resin, so do these creatures turn a disease, life in perpetuity, into a temptation. They leave a trail of smoke, moss, and earthy patchouli. To tempt they carry the redolence of sweet tobacco fields and the lightness of lemon, but do not be taken in. Their wish is to turn you into one of them. Notes: limoncello, incense, cardomom, patchouli, papyrus, tobacco leaves, moss.

 Cuir et Champignon by DSH Perfumes

Deep in the forest hide the woodland sprites. They have magic ways. They can call to the animals and make them do their bidding, as they are part animal themselves. Have you ever walked through the forest and felt that there was something there, watching you silently? Perhaps it is the woodland sprite. They can disappear into tree trunks and blend into the background of the forest, it's their secret camouflage. The only way you may know they are around is the small white mushrooms they feast on in the dead of night, they need them to survive. Train your nose to smell the subtle earthiness of the little white mushrooms that grow in the dark loamy earth. They will smell of the woods of the forest, of the animals that rustle amongst them, of smoke, and of forest herbs like clary sage and wild chamomile. Notes: castoreum, civet, cedarwood, vetiver, leather, cepes, peru balsam, wild chamomile, bergamot, clary sage, galbanum.

Bull's Blood by Imaginary Authors

The first thing you smell as he comes for you, appearing from nowhere as a wraith is the cold, astringent, and metallic scent of blood. Then your mind whirls with images of dirt, an animalic miasma of fur and skin, and the incongruous note of a beautiful red rose. As you seem to fall and melt toward the earth you realize that the ringing smell of blood is your blood. Notes: Patchouli, rose, costus root, black musk, bull's blood

Encens en Lavande by Serge Lutens

The cold stone which has stood for one hundred years should feel safe and stable, but instead the mists lend an air of danger. Strangely there is the scent of incense from the ancient crypts of the church and a faint lingering note of lavender. Notes: Incense, lavender, iris, amber, wood notes.

Finding the Perfect Honeysuckle Scent

When I remember the scents of my Texas childhood, honeysuckle will always play a part. It wasn't as showy as the lone gardenia bush outside my Mother's kitchen window that she babied and even occasionally covered with a blanket on a cold winter night. It was never really planted in the landscape, it just appeared. In fact its greatest charm was that it was a rogue bush, tenacious in its growth  and unfussy in its habitat needs. In those more innocent days when as children we could roam far afield during summer days, away from our Mother's watchful eye, you would smell the honeysuckle before you saw it in field explorations. You could be approaching the little creek running through the field and suddenly smell its sweet honey floating on the breeze. In fact it seemed that the more decrepit, decaying, or derelict the location, the more likely you were to find a honeysuckle vine thriving away in benign neglect.

If you Google honeysuckle one of the top articles has the headline: Honeysuckle Is A Blob-Like Monster Taking Over American Forests. This is the Japanese species, Lonicera Japonica introduced to the USA in the early 1900s. It found fertile ground in some states and can spread prolifically. There is a species of native honeysuckle sold in plant nurseries which is pretty but scentless, much like how the scent was bred out of some roses. Today I don't often see honeysuckle bushes in the carefully tended yards of my neighbors, but in older neighborhoods and along a back road it can often be found climbing fences and spilling down the other side in lacy clouds of white and yellow blossoms. I have such happy memories of having a tea party with my childhood friend in my backyard, each of us with out favorite doll on a small blanket. A pile of honeysuckle blossoms, freshly picked, were on a plate. We'd carefully pull the slender thread of the stamen out through the bottom of the flower and taste the tiny drop of nectar that glistened on the tip. Then we'd offer a taste to our dolls.  All this is to say that probably more than most floral scents, honeysuckle is the stuff of childhood. Memories of the scent are tied up with visiting my Grandparent's rustic house in the country, and as dusk fell madly running around the yard with all my cousins, trying to catch fireflies in jam jars, then releasing them and watching them soar off into the dark skies, all of this scented by the tangle of honeysuckle vines and the prickly blackberry bushes.

Honeysuckle scents stimulate some of these great memories of my childhood summers so I set about trying as many scents featuring honeysuckle as I could get my hands on in a hurry.


Dame Perfumery Soliflore Honeysuckle is a soft fragrant breath of  scent, reminiscent of backyard barbecues, old style wooden picnic tables clad with red and white checkered cloths, and a yard shaded with large old oaks and tangles of honeysuckle bushes climbing the chain leak fence. It is soft and gentle and gives an interpretation of honeysuckle that starts off slightly creamy and with a touch of lemon. It is only a little sweet, just like the flower, and is a very good rendition which reminded me of my childhood backyard. I think someone would have to move in close to smell this, projection is not huge. I found it to be a very pretty honeysuckle that had a smile on my face while I was wearing it. Jeffrey Dame makes a collection of Soliflores and his Gardenia and Rose de Mai are among my favorites. He describes his soliflore collection: A true floral, alive and in full bloom. Lifting off into the breeze, floating in the air; adrift in the garden of earthly delight. For me, Dame Soliflore Honeysuckle is CREAMY honeysuckle.

Deconstructing Eden's Halo is old-time summer in a bottle. The perfumer says it's a Charleston summer to her, and the description says: moonlight, sea water, lilacs, wisteria, honeysuckle and moonflower. Halo is a breath of sea-water laden air with rich floral notes that are predominantly lilac and honeysuckle. Acquatic notes can sometimes put me off but this one just adds to the perfume oils lazy summer mood. (NOTE: since last night the shop has put up a sign that they are on hiatus for three months and that Halo will be discontinued. Once she opens, though, I'll be asking her to please recreate this one.) Halo is LANGUID honeysuckle.

Annick Goutal Le Chevrefeuille was created in 2002 by Annick's daughter Camille and Perfumer Isabelle Doyen as a nod to Camille's happy childhood memories of her family's home in the south of France, playing Princess dress up with her cousins, their heads crowned with honeysuckle wreaths. It's a nod to cheerful childhood memories. This scent opens with a green note, meant to invoke the leaves and stems of the honeysuckle as well as grass, but the green does not overshadow the honeysuckle scent, which is enfolded in notes of wild narcissus, jasmine, lemon and petit grain. I find this to be the greenest of the honeysuckle scents I tried. My bottle is probably ten years old so I'm not absolutely positive that the formula hasn't changed, but this is a favorite for me. Le Chevrefeuille is JOYOUS honeysuckle.

The Strange South, an Etsy shop, sells a perfume oil called Nightjar. I love the gothic images used to populate the online webshop. Nightjar does have honeysuckle in the mix, but it opens with the  scent of peach blossom. Other listed notes, which I can not recognize individually but give some idea that this is a deeper and more complex scent include: sage, fern, tuberose, dragon's blood, clove, and smoked vanilla. This reflects a garden as dusk fades into night; when all the flowers are emitting their strongest scent, no longer battling the heat of the sun. Creatures of the night take flight. The garden takes on an air of mystery and intrigue.  Nightjar isn't super strong on me but is definitely moodier and darker than the scents above. Nightjar is BROODING honeysuckle.



Alkemia is on Etsy and it has a prolific catalog of scents. Two attracted my attention with their honeysuckle notes, Desiderata and Midnight Garden and they have wildly different takes on the flower's scent. Midnight Garden surrounds the honeysuckle with gardenia, lily, and tuberose and despite this basket of sweet flower goodness it manages to be a pretty but softly contained scent. It's creamy and sweet and feels like you're at high tea in a Southern mansion with huge white columns on the porch and three hundred year old oak canopies shading the lawn.  Desiderata is Grapes of Wrath to Midnight Garden's more Steel Magnolia vibe. The notes of Desiderata are fresh honeysuckle, vetiver root, old barnwood, and river clay. Are those real notes? I don't know but it reads like the outline for a great novel, or for a great perfume. The honeysuckle is faint initially as if carried on the breeze. The vetiver is a bit dusty and gives the impression of wandering down a country road. I love that this is a realistic interpretation of how honeysuckle sprouts up in the wild and incorporates the smells that would be found in this setting. I smell the woody notes, and if clay is the impression of dirt and dust then that's there too. I do wish the honeysuckle scent hung around a bit longer but the vetiver begins to dominate. Still, I quite like this. These scents are oil based and they wear quietly, almost personal scents on my skin. I get about three hours of good longevity. Midnight Garden is LADYLIKE honeysuckle and  Desiderata is RUSTIC honeysuckle.

Sixteen92 made big splash a year or so ago when the perfume Bruise Violet was chosen as the winner of the 2017 Art + Olfaction Award - Artisan. Sixteen92 was at that time an unknown brand and beat out much more well known brands to win this honor. When I placed my sample order I meant to try her perfume A Thousand Times More Fair which features honeysuckle but I somehow messed up and forgot to include it. I did, however, order Supernatural Hair Serum in Tomato Leaf and Honeysuckle and wow, it's beautiful. I have thin, fine hair. Sounds lovely, right? In humid weather my hair puffs out like a poodle head and I've found a light application of oil to the ends is the best thing for controlling the frizz. The scent is described on the website as: green grass, sweet tomato leaf, and warm honeysuckle vine. This is a natural and slightly green honeysuckle and I love how my head is surrounded in a scent cloud of wonderfullness when I wear this serum. With each turn of my head I get a mini rush of happiness as the scent reaches the little happy olfactory receptors in my brain. Tomato Leaf and Honeysuckle Serum is REALISTIC honeysuckle.

There are few scents that Dawn Spencer Hurwitz hasn't dabbled with so I was fairly certain when I drew out my huge box that holds all the samples from DSH Perfumes collected over the years that I would find honeysuckle, and indeed I did. DSH Perfumes Wild Honeysuckle is a very realistic interpretation of the honeysuckle flower. It opens with a green and natural honeysuckle scent that is very soft and extremely realistic. There is the slightest powdery feel to the scent that reminds me of pollen. It is a simple replication of nature, perfect in its simplicity. I could see having a rollerball of this perfume available in my purse to drag out when ever I need a bit of zen in my day. Wearing it gives me a feeling of peacefulness and puts a smile on my face. It is surprisingly long lasting for such an ephemeral scent.  Wild Honeysuckle is PURE honeysuckle.

I haven't loved all the scents by the Estee Lauder Aerin brand as much as I would like. (I'm shamefully influenced by great graphics and beautiful packaging). I do, however, very much like Aerin Mediterranean Honeysuckle, enough so that I bought a gift set recently from Nordstrom, one of those boxes where you get a travel size and lotion for the same price as the bottle. The SA told me that at their store this was the best selling perfume from the Aerin brand. It doesn't surprise me as the scent of honeysuckle is a part of so many Southerner's memories.  Aerin Lauder sidestepped any references to the US market though by naming this Mediterranean Honeysuckle, and trying to curry associations to glamorous European vacations and everything that infers. The scent does conjure images of sparkling water, sandy beaches, and sunny summer days. The opening notes include grapefruit, bergamot, and mandarin oil to amp the sparkling citrus effect. To accentuate the honeysuckle scent, notes of lily, jasmine, and gardenia bring in creamy white flower notes. The scent is linear on my skin, but it's pretty and although it wears stronger than many of the naturals I've talked about above, it still doesn't seem like a big scent to me. Aerin Mediterranean Honeysuckle is a LASTING honeysuckle.

Honeysuckle: Harvesting the Sweet Nectar of Life by Falaco Soliton. WWW.Instructables.com.

Although Tom Ford Fleur de Portofino does not to my knowledge have honeysuckle as an ingredient, the acacia honey notes in the base combined with a cascade of sweet white flowers give it the feel of an opulent honeysuckle floral to me. The flowers used are white acacia, gardenia, magnolia, and jasmine. I really like this scent and the sheer blue bottle is appealing but I get no longevity to justify the price point. Tom Ford Fleur de Portifino is EXPENSIVE honeysuckle. by Es

Fresh Honeysuckle was launched in 2014 and I've tried it several times over the years. It was one of those perfumes I wanted to like but it just didn't move me. I ran over to the local Sephora to spray it so I could give a better review but they don't seem to carry the line anymore. My memory is that there was a little of a chemical smell that put me off.

Demeter Honeysuckle is another one I tried to find to review but was unsuccessful. It has decent reviews on Fragrantica and it's cheap as chips so I'll definitely keep my eye out for it.

Are there any great honeysuckle scents out there that I've forgotten?

You can read part II of finding the perfect honeysuckle scent by clicking here.

Top photo: USDA Agricultural Research Service, Charles T. Bryson, photographer. Chasing Fireflies print by Sylvia Pimental. Le Chevrefeuille bottle from www.AnnickGoutal.com website. Artwork from The Strange South website, but originally by Lee Brown Coye, 1948. Bumblebee photo from www.thewhitepaintedwoman.wordpress.com. Perfumes my own.