Part 2: Places
My spreadsheet lasted exactly five minutes.
The original plan seemed perfectly sensible.
Brand.
Fragrance.
Notes.
Rating.
Done.
Instead, I found myself writing things like:
Tea House.
Rainy Afternoon.
Silk Road Library.
At first I thought I was simply being whimsical.
I wasn’t.
I was discovering that “fragrance notes” answered the wrong question.
One of the first fragrances I revisited was Taipei by One Day.
If you look up the official notes, you’ll find soy milk, rice, taro, iris, vetiver, and sandalwood.
Perfectly reasonable.
Entirely accurate.
And almost completely unhelpful.
Because that’s not what I experienced.
What I experienced was:
Congee by Steamed Windows.
A rainy morning.
Warm rice.
A small iris ikebana on a table.
Quiet.
Comfort.
The fragrance wasn’t describing ingredients.
It was allowing me to describe a place.
Not a real place.
A place I wanted to be.
The next surprise arrived with Jade Amour.
Again, the notes were perfectly accurate.
Again, they told me almost nothing.
Instead, I found myself writing:
Silk Road Library.
Not because the fragrance literally smelled like old books.
It didn’t.
It smelled like curiosity.
Like wandering.
Like discovering something unexpected just beyond the next shelf.
I realized I wasn’t cataloging fragrances anymore.
I was cataloging destinations.
About this time I exchanged emails with Sebastian about Taipei.
I enthusiastically described it as:
Congee by Steamed Windows.
Winter Japan.
Comfort.
His response arrived almost immediately.
“Chips, a bag of crunchy chips! Doritos Blue to be exact!”
I laughed out loud.
Not because he was wrong.
Because neither of us was.
We were smelling exactly the same fragrance.
He got Doritos.
I got Winter Japan.
That may have been the moment I began wondering whether fragrances function as a sort of personality assessment.
Show ten people an inkblot and you’ll likely get ten different interpretations.
Have ten people experience the same fragrance and you’ll likely get ten different journeys.
One person gets a rainy morning in Japan.
Another gets the snack aisle.
Neither of us was wrong.
We had simply traveled to different places.
That realization quietly changed the entire project.
I stopped asking:
What notes are in this fragrance?
And started asking:
Where does this fragrance take me?
The answers turned out to be far more interesting.
Tea houses.
Libraries.
Eventually monasteries.
Rose gardens.
Sailboats.
Even Renaissance Faires.
(We’ll get to the Renaissance Faire.)
Looking back, I suspect this was the moment the inventory truly escaped.
Because I wasn’t building a fragrance catalog anymore.
I was beginning to draw a map.
Field Notes
Throughout this series, I’ll occasionally compare the traditional fragrance description with my own experience.
Not because one is “right” and the other is “wrong.”
They’re simply answering different questions.
The official description tells me what the perfumer created.
My field notes record where it took me.
Taipei1
Fragrantica Entry
Taipei by One Day is a Floral Woody Musk fragrance for women and men, launched in 2023. The nose behind the fragrance is Michael Wong.
Top: Rice • Soy Milk • Taro
Heart: Iris • Guaiac Wood
Base: Musk • Sandalwood • Vetiver
My Field Notes
Mood: Congee by Steamed Windows
Theme: Comfort
Warm soy milk, cooked rice, thick taro; iris, vetiver, sandalwood. Comforting/grounding: congee on a rainy morning w/steamed windows & a small iris ikebana on the table. Nothing powdery. Warm vetiver emerges in drydown. Congee fades; comfort remains. Inward facing. Not projecting (e.g., Not “Who I want you to think I am”) Instead, offering internal comfort like a smooth stone in the pocket. Constantly returned to it all day.
Unexpected Observation
The same fragrance that became Congee by Steamed Windows for me became Doritos for Sebastian.
Apparently fragrance can function as a kind of Rorschach test.
Postscript
I am writing this postscript a month later.
I’ve had a long, rough work week.
Last night, after acupuncture, I was exhausted.
I was supposed to go out and walk the dogs.
I called my friend.
Called it off.
I simply couldn’t face it.
I needed to go to bed.
At 6:30 p.m.
I didn’t think about bergamot.
I didn’t think about jasmine.
I didn’t think about rice accords.
I thought,
“I want to feel comforted.”
My hand reached for Taipei before my mind had finished the sentence.
I fell asleep with my nose against my arm.
It’s the first time in this project that a fragrance wasn’t an experiment.
It wasn’t a destination.
It wasn’t a story.
It became a tool.
For living.
When this project began, I jokingly referred to the medicine cabinet in my bathroom as my “medicine chest of scents.”
That’s where all the cologne bottles live.
Last night, I opened that same medicine cabinet because I needed comfort.
Without thinking, I reached for Taipei.
Somewhere along the way, without my noticing . . .
. . . my medicine cabinet had quietly become a medicine chest.
Not because perfume cures anything.
It doesn’t.
But because, one bottle at a time, I had unknowingly assembled a small cabinet of emotional remedies.
Last night, I didn’t need a fragrance.
I needed comfort.
And before my mind had even finished the thought . . .
. . . my hand already knew where to find it.
Jade Amour
Fragrantica2 Entry
Jade Amour by Thomas de Monaco is an Oriental Floral fragrance for women and men, launched in 2025. The nose behind the fragrance is David Chieze.
Notes: Yellow Mandarin • Ylang-Ylang • Jasmine • Muscone • Bergamot • Vanilla • Sandalwood • Vetiver
Inspired by the idea of the unscented jade vine flower discovering fragrance for the first time.
My Field Notes
Mood: Silk Road Library
Theme: Curiosity
Warm honey, warm florals, vanilla and vetiver. Rich, complex, and quietly inviting. Oriental without being heavy; elegant without performing. In drydown warm woods emerge; curiosity remains. The fragrance becomes less about flowers, more about exploration. An afternoon alone in a library lined with silk, old books, & amber light . . . and the distinct feeling that the next shelf contains something wonderful.
Unexpected Observation
The fragrance never became “a flower.”
It became curiosity.
Some fragrances don’t describe themselves.
They describe a state of mind.
- I will be giving a link to the fragrances in each blog. I don’t get a thing if you click on them. I just thought you’d like to have them. ↩︎
- Fragrantica is an online fragrance database where perfumes are cataloged by their notes, perfumers, release dates, and community reviews. ↩︎
