The Monday Mail is our not-so-regular feature where readers help other readers find the perfect fragrance. Today’s subject: Alissa. When Alissa was young, her grandmother gave her some cute perfume samples and started her on the road to collecting, first for the bottles, later, as she grew older, for the juice.

She needs help today on a very specific quest. On a trip to China with her boyfriend, they visited several temples. Inside the temples, there was incense burning. She loved the smell, and after doing some research she thinks the incense was probably sandalwood. Alissa wants to find a perfume that will smell like the incense from those temples. She is willing to spend up to €250 euro, but she’d like that price to fetch her a large bottle (150-200 ml)…

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Fabio is back for a third round of the Monday Mail, our not-so-regular feature where readers help other readers find the perfect fragrance. Fabio wants a new summer fragrance for 2015. He’d like something sophisticated and elegant, and perhaps sexy as well. He’d like to stick to a price range of $80 – $120, and while niche is fine, he’d rather not have something difficult to find.

Here is what we know about Fabio…

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Maneki, who lives in Sweden, wants our help with a very particular scent quest. She’s primarily interested in finding the right samples, so price isn’t an issue. Do read on and see if you can help:

I’m dreaming of summer evenings, of sitting on a hill watching the sunset while a gentle wind blows in the hair. And there’s one scent I imagine being part of this scene: coumarin. Or, rather, the coumarin-laden plants on that very hill: “vanilla grass”/sweet vernal grass (Anthoxanthum odoratum) and sweet grass (Hierochloe odorata). While I can always go sniff the sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) in our garden …I’d love a scent for those grey and cold days when I long for the beautiful white nights of June…

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Loni wants to find one or two new fragrances. The first would be her signature scent — something versatile enough to wear to the office or while playing outside with her daughter, but also interesting enough to see her through everything else. It should be close, pretty, natural and comfortable, like a second skin. The second scent would be something with more “oomph”, for date nights.

She can pay upwards of $150 for something she really loves, and she has great access to perfume shopping (and can shop online). Here is what we know about Loni:

She’s in her early 30s and lives in Los Angeles (no need for a seasonal perfume wardrobe).

She loves birding, hiking, making soup, eating ultra-smelly “banned-on-a-french-bus” cheese, museums and the arts, and travel.

She managed the fine fragrance department at Nordstrom just after college for a year or so…

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Yes, we’re still doing the Monday Mail…but intermittently. If you’ve never participated, it’s simple: read Connie’s story, chime in with your recommendations! And if you’d like to be the subject of a Monday Mail post, see here.

Connie has been seriously interested in perfume for about three years. Her first love was Miller Harris L’Air de Rien — she still loves its horse stable, nostalgia, gourmandy, skanky beauty. Today, she’s not looking for anything specific, just new perfume loves that she hasn’t discovered yet. She leans towards less casual, more adventurous fragrances; her budget is loose but she isn’t thinking JAR, Roja Dove or Xerjoff…

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