Welcome to the weekly Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.

Today is Friday, May 26, and it is the start of the Memorial Day weekend here in America. While we all look forward to the long weekend and enjoy the sales that are popping up in email and on social media, I hope we will also remember the underlying meaning of Memorial Day, to commemorate the deaths of those who have served in our armed forces, and pause to appreciate their service. It’s also the week of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show, which takes place on the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, a residence and facility for military pensioners. At the flower show, you can often see them walking around in their distinctive red uniforms. Nowadays, the Chelsea Pensioners include women as well as men; below is a photo I took of a pensioner admiring flowers, on my last visit to Chelsea — wish I was there this year! As you can imagine, the whole area is filled with wonderful fragrances from the many flowers and other plants.

We have been enjoying glorious weather this week: sunny but not too hot or humid. I plan to do a lot of gardening this weekend! My roses are putting out a second flush of blooms, and they smell just as wonderful as they did the first time. This may have been my best year yet for my roses in pots, I think because we got so much rain this spring and then the weather stayed sunny but cool.

Here in the US, Memorial Day is traditionally considered the start of summer. I will look over the clutter of fragrances now on my chest of drawers and try to reorganize with more of the fragrances that seem “summery” to me. Since I love florals so much, I have plenty of options!

Do you have any particular fragrances you prefer in the summer, or that you think give off a “summery” vibe? And what would be a summery vibe to you? I often think of citruses combined with floral notes as summer fragrances. Un Jardin sur le Nil is one of my seasonal favorites.