More new and upcoming perfume books for 2017: Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America by Melanie A. Kiechle, Flavor: The Science of Our Most Neglected Sense by Bob Holmes, The French Perfumer by Amanda Hampson, and Les cent-onze parfums qu’il faut sentir avant de mourir by Jeanne Doré, Yohan Cervi and Alexis Toublanc…
New and upcoming perfume books for 2017: The Art of Flavor: Practices and Principles for Creating Delicious Food by Mandy Aftel and Daniel Patterson, Smothering the Savage and An Imperfect Mimic by Avery Gilbert, Eisenberg Originals: The Golden Years of Fashion, Jewelry, and Fragrance, 1920s-1950s by Sharon Schwartz and Laura Sutton, Scents and Sensibility: Perfume in Victorian Literary Culture by Catherine Maxwell, Le roman des Guerlain by Élisabeth de Feydeau.
A second book from chef Daniel Patterson and perfumer Mandy Aftel of Aftelier…
To live is to breathe, to breathe is to smell.
Scent is a part of life, from our first seconds of existence when we recognize our mother’s smell, to our last years, when a familial scent can suddenly transport us far away, into a past we’d believed forgotten.
Everyone is fascinated by scent, but smelling isn’t a sense as obscure and complicated as one would have us believe. On the contrary, it is within each of us, forms a direct connection to our emotions, and only asks to be invited to express itself, to blossom and be set free. And it’s our modest ambition to offer you this introduction to the world through your nostrils!1
So begins the first issue of “Nez: La Revue Olfactive” (spring/summer 2016). Jeanne Doré, of the French perfume blog Auparfum, along with the design and publications team of Editions Le Contrepoint, started Nez. So far, it has been released twice a year, for two issues to date, both in French. Nez’s spring/summer 2017 issue, launching mid-April, will be the magazine’s first English-language version. For me, it will be a must-read…
Why do you read an autobiography? For me, it comes down to two reasons. First, the author might have lived at the center of history or in unusual circumstances, and I’m fascinated by her perspective. The other reason is that the author’s life and the way it’s told simply make a good story. This kind of autobiography travels an arc and gives the reader nuggets of life’s truth that resonate. Jo Malone: My Story offers us tastes from both of these categories, but, ultimately, feels like a PR job about a really nice, entrepreneurial woman, someone I’d love to know, but no one I need to read a whole book about.
Jo Malone: My Story is written in a clear, approachable way with a taste of the British working girl about it…
Halfway through Lizzie Ostrom’s Perfume: A Century of Scents, I set down the book and wondered who it was written for. Not the perfumista. Ostrom’s essays on the book’s 100 featured fragrances often leave out key lore or information on a perfume’s place in the pantheon, its history, or sometimes even how the perfume smells. Then it occurred to me: the book isn’t about perfume, it’s a telling of social history through perfume.
Perfume: A Century of Scents presents ten fragrances for each of the twentieth century’s decades and an essay introducing each decade. Each fragrance gets a Thurber-style illustration and a snappy nickname. The book starts with Houbigant Parfum Idéal in 1900 (“the Queen-Bee Perfume”) and ends with 1996’s Demeter Dirt (“the Un-Perfume”).
When I say that the book isn’t really about perfume, I mean that, for instance, in Ostrom’s essay on Diorissimo you won’t find the story of Roudnitska’s study of his patch of lilies of the valley, or even much of a description of how the fragrance smells. Instead, once you’ve waded through a page of how tough it is for men to buy perfume for their wives, you get a comparison of Diorissimo to Grace Kelly and Dior fashion’s “modest, appealingly feminine lines.” It’s a comment on the times…