The Book of Scented Things: 100 Contemporary Poems about Perfume will be published next month by Literary House Press…
(Even) more new & upcoming perfume books for 2014
More new and upcoming perfume books for 2014: Dior: The Perfumes by Chandler Burr; The Perfume Bible by Josephine Fairley and Lorna McKay; Season of the Dragonflies by Sarah Creech; and Parfums: Scents and Sensibilities by Philippe Claudel. Also, the second edition of Roja Dove’s The Essence of Perfume is due out in October.
Dior: The Perfumes
Written by Chandler Burr…
Fragrant: The Secret Life of Scent by Mandy Aftel ~ new perfume book
Fragrant: The Secret Life of Scent, by Mandy Aftel of indie perfume house Aftelier, will be published in October of this year. Aftel’s prior books on perfumery include Essence & Alchemy, Scents & Sensibility and Aroma…
The Collector of Dying Breaths by M. J. Rose ~ perfume book review
The Collector of Dying Breaths by M.J. Rose brands itself as “a novel of suspense.” After reading it, I’d like to propose another genre for it: modern gothic. The novel features an old French chateau, complicated family relationships, dungeons, murderous intrigue, and spontaneous past life regression. Open the book and you practically hear the thunder rumbling in the distance.
The Collector of Dying Breaths follows two interwoven storylines. The first story is told through a letter from René le Florentin, Catherine de Medici’s perfumer. René learned his trade at a monastery, where he was apprenticed to a monk who was working on a formula for immortality, which required as an ingredient a person’s last living breath. His story is interspersed with Jacqueline L’Etoile’s present-day story, told in the third person. Jac comes from a long line of perfumers…
Rare Perfumes ~ perfume book review
Rare Perfumes (the French version is called Parfums Rares) is a celebration of niche perfumery, in a coffee table format with large illustrations and plenty of white space (see images below). It was commissioned by the Osmothèque, the museum and scent archive in Versailles, and sponsored by The Fragrance Foundation France, InterParfums, Robert Piguet and Parfums de Nicolaï, among others. It was written by two fragrance journalists, Sabine Chabbert and Laurence Férat, and features a preface by Patricia de Nicolaï.
If you’re looking for a critical, in-depth analysis of how niche perfumes fit into — or don’t fit into — the larger fragrance market, or how niche influences mainstream or vice versa, look elsewhere (and tell me where you find it). This is not that, nor is it a niche version of something like Michael Edwards’ Perfume Legends: French feminine fragrances, with its focus on perfume development and the interplay between brands, perfumers, marketers and designers. Other than in passing, you will learn relatively little about individual fragrances or how they differ from from their mainstream counterparts…