I recently came across two books on hygiene and body culture: Douglas Mackaman's Leisure Settings (1998), on the history of health spas in France, and Katherine Ashenburg's The Dirt on Clean (2007), on changing attitudes towards body odor through the ages. I haven't read either one of them yet, but from what I understand, both explore fields that are closely related to the work of French historian Georges Vigarello. I've been meaning to review his book Concepts of Cleanliness for quite some time; it's not seldom that words like 'clean' and 'dirty' appear in perfume reviews — take Robin's recent post on Guerlain Shalimar for example — and it's nice to put their meaning in a cultural perspective. Vigarello's book is a scholarly work on hygiene and cleanliness, and sets the record straight on some widespread historical misconceptions. Originally published in 1985 (right before Alain Corbin's The Foul and the Fragrant), it covers the period between the late Middle Ages and the 19th century, painting a vivid picture of washing and bathing rituals in France. The author dismisses the common assumption that the Middle Ages were simply 'dirty', and quotes from travel journals, etiquette books and other period documents to reveal that by our modern standards, personal hygiene reached an absolute low point during the 17th and 18th century…
Perfumes: The Guide ~ Q & A with 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…
Coming next week: Q & A with Luca Turin & Tania Sanchez
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
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.
Musc by Percy Kemp ~ perfume book review
Musc is the story of a man's obsession with a perfume and its reformulation. Monsieur Eme, a retired secret service agent living a serene life in Paris, is a physically well preserved and inconspicuously elegant gentleman. True to his Gallic nature, the art of seducing women is his favorite pastime; his secret weapon is Musc, an eau de toilette from a small house in Grasse that works in perfect harmony with his skin. He is by no means a perfume aficionado, but he's been more faithful to his fragrance than to any of the women in his life — including Eve, his mistress of 12 years. Monsieur Eme hasn't worn any other scent in the last 40 years, and Musc has become an essential part of his identity. So what happens when it no longer smells the way it used to? When it diffuses as a bland and synthetic aroma, giving off exactly the same odor on everyone else? For Monsieur Eme, a dramatic scenario unfolds.
The bad news starts on the day he opens a newly designed bottle of Musc…