Culture: 404 posts

Spend a day in Catania, a baroque jewel on the east coast of Sicily, and you will understand why Boudoir 36, an artisanal perfume boutique, is such a great fit for this exuberant city. Every scent, taste and color seems more intense—jasmine draping the building facades, oranges piled into ziggurats on the sidewalks, and even the blue of the sky with a dark triangle of Mount Etna. The perfume selection at Boudoir 36 can rival the finest boutiques in Paris and London, but its flamboyance and opulence are uniquely Sicilian.

Once behind the heavy red curtain of Boudoir 36, you leave behind the bustle of Via Santa Filomena and discover a calm, dark oasis. ‘Boudoir’ is an appropriate name; the boutique is small, only 22 square meters, and it has the intimate ambiance of a private salon. There are shelves upon shelves of perfume bottles, crystal glasses of scent strips, gilded candles, and soaps wrapped in colorful paper. Flowers spill out of vases in baroque arrangements and crystal chandeliers cast a soft glow over the antique furniture.

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I was saddened to learn that perfumer Olivier Pescheux passed away on July 10 in Paris after battling a long illness. He was only 57 years old, too young to leave us. Olivier was one of the first perfumers I met when I first became interested in fragrance, and he was supportive of my interest. I found him down-to-earth and charismatic.

Born in Paris in 1966, Olivier started his perfumery career in Bangkok after graduating from ISIPCA. He also worked at Annick Goutal and Kao Corporation, but most of his work was done at Givaudan. Olivier was well known for his expressive, distinctive style and his successful masculine fragrances. It was he who designed the best-selling Paco Rabanne One Million scent.

Some of Olivier’s most interesting work can be found at Diptyque where he created Orphéon, Fleur de Peau, and Eau Mohéli. I also suggest trying Parfums de Marly Herod, Montblanc Explorer, and Roberto Cavalli Precious Leather. Olivier’s style lent itself to fragrances of different genres and types. “I want my fragrance to tell a story, but above all, I want to make the wearer feel good,” he told during one of our last meetings in Paris. Olivier, you will be missed.

My condolences to Olivier’s family and his colleagues.

Photography by Bois de Jasmin

On Thursday, Russia launched a missile attack on Lviv, a city in western Ukraine, about 60 km from the Polish border. A jewel of Renaissance art, Lviv has a long history. Today it stands in mourning, grieving over the lives lost in the bombardment. Some of its beautiful buildings are in ruin. A few years ago, I spent a memorable time in Lviv with my mother and fell in love with the city. Below is my tribute to its fin-de-siècle allure–and the nostalgic beauty that unities Lviv with another gorgeous city on the other side of the border, Kraków.

In 1808 Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart, the youngest son of the famous composer, traveled to Lemberg. Today it’s Lviv, a city in western Ukraine, but when the eighteen year old pianist was packing his sheet music and books and setting off on his journey, it was located in Galicia, an entity created by Joseph II after the partition of Poland in 1772. (It was the same Joseph that commented about the Marriage of Figaro, “too many notes, Mozart.”) While young Mozart was aware that he was trading Vienna for the provinces, he was in dire straits. Lemberg seemed like a promising place for a pianist to build his career and return to the capital. Mozart ended up staying for more than two decades.

Young Mozart’s early letters to his family were filled with mentions of his “loneliness [Einsamkeit].” He acutely felt the Galician isolation and complained that his inspiration was deserting him. He envisioned all of the brilliant conversations he could have experienced in Vienna society, the music, the books, the arts, and despaired of finding anything similar in Lemberg. Franz Mozart’s output over his lifetime was indeed small, yet, what becomes obvious is how much he drew on the local surroundings and how creatively he interpreted them.

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I’m delighted to share that my book The Rooster House is now available in the USA and Canada. It has been released by Abrams Press on June 27th and it’s now on the bookshelves around the country. The New York Times ran a review of my book earlier this week.

“When something of ours, something we took for granted as being ours, is destroyed before our eyes,” writes the Ukrainian-born journalist Victoria Belim, early in her absorbing memoir, “we are destroyed along with it.” “When Going Home Becomes a Fact-Finding Mission,” The New York Times, June 27, 2023

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My book The Rooster House was published yesterday by Virago Press. It’s being released during a trying time for my country. Even though its story begins in 2014, my book explains the context in which the Russian invasion takes place. It does so by focusing on ordinary people and their voices. While the book recounts Ukrainian history through a personal story, it celebrates four generations of remarkable women who held our family together through the most trying circumstances. As The Rooster House reveals, Ukrainian history is full of tragic events, but it is also a testament to the resilience and strength of Ukrainians. My great-grandmother Asya and my grandmother Valentina possessed incredible emotional resources, which made them able to protect their family and take care of their land.

As I wrote my memoir, I sought to capture my grandmothers’ lessons in seeking beauty and deriving support from creative pursuits like embroidery or gardening. For this reason, Ukrainian culture and art form the leitmotif of The Rooster House, and I take the reader on a journey with me through descriptions of Ukrainian scents, foods, nature, and arts. My memoir is an invitation to stroll through our cherry orchard in Bereh and become more intimately familiar with the elements that make up the colorful and diverse Ukrainian identity.

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