Chandler Burr's upcoming book, The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York, is now available for pre-order at Amazon:
…a stylish, fascinating, unprecedented insider's view of an industry and its charismatic characters. No journalist has ever been allowed into the ultrasecretive, highly pressured process of originating a perfume. But Chandler Burr, the New York Times perfume critic, spent a year behind the scenes observing the creation of two major fragrances…
The study found African elephants reacted with fear when they detected the scent of garments previously worn by men of the Maasai tribe.
— Elephants can smell danger. Read more at BBC News. Thank you to Ruth for the link!
University of Manchester researchers found three of the oils, usually used in aromatherapy, destroyed MRSA and E.coli bacteria in two minutes.
— From Aromatherapy oils 'kill superbug', also at the BBC. But before you go looking, they won't say which oils. With thanks to Pia for the link!
It hits you like Wladimir Klitschko’s right hook and smells like his boxing shorts after 10 rounds.
— Chandler Burr on Yves Saint Laurent Kouros, in Meow Mix in today's New York Times.
What did Courtney Love and the late Isabella Blow have in common? Robert Piguet's Fracas. Read more at Coco A-Go-Go at the New York Times, and thank you to Ruth for the link!
While you're at the Times, check out Chandler Burr's latest column, Wood Wins. On Dolce & Gabbana's Light Blue: "One of the most perfectly executed perfumes of the past decade, it is almost insanely good."
One day Pucci mentioned that she loved the smell of a place in Turkey where the coast fell into the sea and the trees almost had their roots in the seawater, a mix of wood, sea breeze and fresh air, so Demachy specified patchouli and vetiver for the woody signature and certain synthetic molecules for the scent of the ocean. He kept its chypre heritage but twisted it in a modern way, finally adding galbanum to the top of the scent’s structure to make it less “tender.”
— Columnist Chandler Burr traces the history of Pucci’s Vivara fragrance in Back in Print in yesterday’s New York Times…
We'd like to think we know our news anchors, but one thing not conveyed through the screen is how they smell. Gossip sites however recently reported that Tom Ford approached Anderson Cooper to make his own line of cologne. A Ford rep told us the reports aren’t true, but that didn't stop us from calling New York Times scent critic Chandler Burr.
— Smells Like News, at WAMU radio in Washington, considers how you might develop fragrances to represent well-known TV news personalities. Thanks to Erica for the link.
They seem old-fashioned. Simple fragrances, where one note takes center stage, are more modern.
— Sarah Horowitz of Creative Scentualization, explaining why complex fragrances are no longer in style, in People magazine. Thanks to Angie for the quote!