Perfumistas will want to take note of two special events hosted by the Smithsonian Resident Associate Program in Washington, DC this coming February:
The Art of Fragrance (In Collaboration with the Embassy of France With Sparkling Wine Toast) with Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez, Friday, 5 February at 6:45 pm:
Tonight, we cut through the usual perfume-babble to illuminate the art of fragrance…
The new paperback version of Perfumes: The Guide by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez is now available under the name Perfumes: The A-Z Guide. The retail price is $20; Amazon has it at the moment for $13.60.
The book includes the reviews from the hardback plus the reviews from the three quarterly updates, and a handful of new reviews and a few other changes…
Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez have released the Spring 2009 update to Perfumes: The Guide. The update includes reviews of over 200 fragrances, and is available for download for $9.99.
Here is Tania Sanchez on Guerlain’s L’Instant Magic Elixir…
Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez have released the second quarterly update to Perfumes: The Guide. The Winter 2008 update includes reviews of 129 fragrances plus a top 10 list for 2008, and is available for download for $9.99.
Tania Sanchez on Juicy Couture's Viva La Juicy: "I suspect that Firmenich keeps a swimming-pool-sized vat filled with a diabolically saccharine standard mixture of fruit flavor, vanilla, and musk, fixed with a tap, for perfumers to decant for clients who use pink in the packaging."
But if the title lacks poetic fun, the book most certainly does not. Although the language occasionally dips into the kind of hyperbolic floweriness one perhaps must expect from enthusiastic connoisseurs, on the whole it is written with pleasing plainness and, most of all, a sense of humour. Guerlain's Mouchoir de Monsieur is lauded with an adulatory four-star review and readers are advised that "if you can wear it without thinking of Rupert Everett playing Beau Brummell, do so by all means", while something called Montana Mood Sexy is dismissed with one star and a curt "not tonight".
— From Talking scents: Hadley Freeman meets Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez, a couple united by their passion for perfume, who have written a sniffer's guide to help us distinguish the 'whippet-like' from the 'slutty'. At the Guardian.