About

“Our senses are teased by Victoria’s tantalizing description of fragrance and food,”

The Huffington Post

“She muses on the inadequacy of the language commonly used to describe perfume, while expanding it considerably with her own words and thoughts,”

The Financial Times

“Smart blog,”

The Times

About Bois de Jasmin

Bois de Jasmin is a primer on sensory pursuits. It has been exploring the realm of the senses since 2005. At its heart is our fascination with scents, and Bois de Jasmin covers everything that makes life richer and more interesting–art, cuisine, science, and travel. After all, perfume as an artistic expression of olfaction doesn’t exist in the cultural vacuum. Weekly features include reviews, offer suggestions on sampling teas, creating spice mixtures, building fragrance wardrobe, and discovering new books with the help of our generous community of several thousand readers. We are as passionate about perfume as about Persian literature, Ukrainian embroidery, classical dance, Japanese magazines, and Indian spices. We plead guilty to an occasional gratuitous use of cat photos (and we also love dogs.)

Recommended by publications such as The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Huffington Post, Allure, Women’s Wear Daily, and Vogue, Bois de Jasmin is also the winner of two Fragrance Foundation FiFi awards for Editorial Excellence.

Our Manifesto : In the Defense of Guilt-Free Pleasures

About Victoria Belim-Frolova, Editor and Writer

Photography by Bois de Jasmin

A writer and journalist, Victoria explores her eclectic interests in her work. After pursuing her graduate degree in political science, she followed her passion for fragrance and acquired perfumery training at International Flavors & Fragrances. Inspired by her mentor, renowned perfumer Sophia Grojsman, Victoria researches raw materials and travels around the world to find new aromatics. As a journalist, she covers all topics related to art and culture. As a member of the Société Française des Parfumeurs (French Society of Perfumers), she collaborates with universities around the world to designs perfume seminars and lecture series on olfaction, art, and science.

Victoria has fragrance column in The Financial Times Magazine and her writing on culture and lifestyle topics has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, ELLE, Red Magazine, Marie Claire, and Flair. She is also a translator of Persian literature and poetry. Victoria speaks 18 languages, including Chinese, Japanese, and Indonesian.  Born in Ukraine, she grew up in the USA and now lives in Brussels, Belgium.

Follow Victoria on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Contact Victoria.

About Elisa Gabbert, Contributing Writer

Elisa’s first brush with perfume greatness came in the form of a bottle of White Linen lotion. About 20 years later, she fell down the rabbit hole after reading Perfumes: The A to Z Guide cover to cover on a flight. She is the author of The Unreality of Memory and several poetry collections including The French Exit and The Self Unstable. She is a founding member of Denver Poets’ Theater and lives in Denver. You can also read her other writing on her personal website.

About Courtney Humphreys, Guest Writer

Courtney is a freelance journalist and author living in Boston, and she writes about science, health, and culture for a variety of publications. I especially recommend her article for Wired, Engineering Replacements for Essential Perfume Ingredients. Courtney became enamored with perfume after wandering into a Diptyque shop several years ago and smelling Philosykos, which immediately captured her attention. As she describes, “A quick web search on it led me to perfume blogs and reviews, and my journey went from there.”  Please see Courtney’s articles here.

For other guest writers and past contributors, please see the guest writer page.

Disclaimer: Bois de Jasmin is a personal blog developed and written by me, Victoria Frolova. I am not paid to recommend anything by anyone and I only write about products that I have sampled myself. I do not write about fragrance brands with which I have been involved as part of my professional career. I do not accept any form of paid topic insertions, sponsored posts, payment for link insertion, posts or product mentions. I use Google AdSense, a third-party keyword based ad system, which reacts automatically to the content on the site. If the sample came from the manufacturer or its PR agency, the source is identified in the review.

Frequent Questions & Answers

Q: What are your credentials for writing about fragrance?  A strong passion for scents! I have learned about fragrance from reading, collecting vintage fragrances, and being professionally trained as a perfumer at International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF). One cannot be an expert in this fascinating subject until one spends a lifetime practicing it, so I have a long way to go.

Q: Why Bois de Jasmin? Bois de Jasmin [bois is pronounced as bwah] can mean either “jasmine wood” or “jasmine forest” in French. It is my fantasy tribute to one of my earliest scent memories: the heady aroma of jasmine vines wrapped around the wooden fence in my grandparents’ garden. Here is how one pronounces Bois de Jasmin: Frag Name of the Day.

Q: Can our company send you a product to try and review? Your company can send me a small sample—please, no full sized bottles, if possible. I do not guarantee that your product will be reviewed or that a review will be positive. Full bottles will be given away as contest prizes for Bois de Jasmin readers. Bois de Jasmin does not accept gifts.

Q: Can I advertise on Bois de Jasmin? Bois de Jasmin does not accept any advertising from perfume brands directly. It does not engage in any affiliate programs nor does it publish sponsored or paid articles of any kind. Finally, Bois de Jasmin does not sell text links. Any link appearing in the text to an outside site is for informational purposes only.

Q: How does one navigate the site? The main page features only the most recent posts in chronological order. You can also use General Article and Perfume Review directories for further reading. Food and flavor related posts are grouped in the  Gourmand Library. You can read about perfume notes, fragrance terminology and vocabulary in the Perfume Notes directory. The search feature allows browsing through all the posts on the website.

Q: What is your privacy policy? Bois de Jasmin’s Privacy Policy can be found following this link: Privacy Policy.

Q: What is your take on copyright? The content of Bois de Jasmin is protected by applicable copyright laws, which prohibit any usage of the material appearing on this site for commercial purposes without explicit consent from the editor. Unauthorized translations and the use of Bois de Jasmin’s original photography are not permitted. Please respect the time and effort that are put into this venue.