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Perfumes: The Guide ~ Q & A with Luca Turin & Tania Sanchez

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Luca Turin & Tania Sanchez

As I said on Friday, Perfumes: The Guide by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez is due to ship from Amazon on 4/10 (list price: $27.95, today's Amazon price: $18.45). The hardcover version is 400 pages and includes introductory material plus reviews of over 1200 fragrances. According to Penguin, the book will “do for fragrance what Robert Parker’s books have done for wine”.

Many of you have pre-ordered the book, or at least read about it (if you missed the review in the New Yorker, do take a peek), and all of you can skip to the second-to-last paragraph for instructions on how to add your questions to our group interview. Those of you who need some further introduction, read on…

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Coming next week: Q & A with Luca Turin & Tania Sanchez

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As most of you already know, Perfumes: The Guide by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez is due out in a couple weeks (current Amazon ship date: 4/10). For those of you who missed that news entirely, here is a little taste of what is to come:

Stupid name, pink perfume, heart shaped bottle, little crown on top. I half expected it to be really great just to spite me. But no, it’s probably the most repulsively cloying thing on the market today.

That's their take on Vera Wang Princess, reprinted from the wonderful review in the New Yorker. The authors have graciously agreed to answer our questions, so come back on Monday to post your question, then I'll post their answers the following week.

The vocabulary of scent

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This is fun to read—and a rare pleasure, too, since the importance of perfume advertising means that one doesn’t often get to read strong criticism of multimillion-dollar-earning fragrances. The joy of Turin and Sanchez’s book, however, is their ability to write about smell in a way that manages to combine the science of the subject with the vocabulary of scent in witty, vivid descriptions of what these smells are like. Their work is, quite simply, ravishingly entertaining, and it passes the high test that their praise is even more compelling than their criticism.

— John Lanchester reviews the upcoming book by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez, Perfumes: The Guide. Read more in Scents and Sensibility in The New Yorker.

You know that pain you get when you eat ice cream too quickly…

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…well, some clean, intense white floral gave Luca Turin that same feeling. Recently. Any guesses??

You can hear him talk about that mystery perfume, and other perfume-related matters, in an interview with Eurovox at dw-world.de:

Luca Turin is a biophysicist, a molecule designer and a perfume critic – one of the few in the world. He talks and writes about perfumes the way other people might discuss wine or gourmet cuisine. Eurovox speaks with him about the surprise behind Chanel No. 5, how bad smells make good scents – and why men should maybe try women's perfumes.

Thanks to Joy for the link! She also found this link to an older WNYC radio show…

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Perfume in the news: Luca Turin & Sarah Jessica Parker

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When I first came across Etat Libre D’Orange, I assumed on the basis of past experience that this niche perfumery firm had all the hallmarks of the classic snob-value ripoff: great names and high concept, crap fragrances. But I’m co-authoring a perfume guide, so I gave them a try.

— Luca Turin tries (and likes!) the Etat Libre d'Orange line. Read the rest at NZZ Folio.

Not to sound treacly, but it would be how my son's bedroom smells when you walk in.

(The scent is) clean, and it's mixed with their sweat while they're sleeping and the cotton of their blankets and the moisture that's right underneath their hair.

— Sarah Jessica Parker on "the most comforting smell she would want to bottle and carry around with her", via USA Today.

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