Buy Now, Pay Later
As low as
$5
/ mo
Learn more
- – 4-month term
- – No impact on credit to apply
- – Instant approval decision
- – Secure and straightforward checkout
Ready to go? Add this product to your cart and select a plan during checkout.
Payment plans are offered through our trusted finance partners Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay, Apple Pay, and PayTomorrow. No-credit-needed leasing options through Acima may also be available at checkout.
Learn more about financing & leasing here.
Selected Option
Free shipping on this product
30-day returns
Learn more
30-day refund / replacement
To qualify for a full refund, items must be returned in their original, unused condition. If an item is returned in a used, damaged, or materially different state, you may be granted a partial refund.
To initiate a return, please visit our Returns Center.
View our full returns policy here.
Availability:
In Stock.
Arrives
Wednesday, Jul 1
Format: Paperback
Description
In the book that started it all, Turin and Sanchez bring perfume appreciation to the attention of the wider culture with their critically lauded guide to over 1,800 fragrances, from their all-time favorites to a stinker described as “like getting lemon juice in a paper cut.” Introductory essays educate the reader on how perfumes are made, what they’re made of, and which are historical and cultural landmarks. Smelling through the top ten lists should be one of any perfume fanatic’s life goals. Read more
Publisher : Perfüümista OÜ
Publication date : February 14, 2019
Language : English
Print length : 566 pages
ISBN-10 : 9949889677
ISBN-13 : 79
Item Weight : 1.55 pounds
Dimensions : 5.5 x 1.42 x 8.5 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #87,130 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #92 in Arts & Photography Criticism
#92 in Arts & Photography Criticism:
Frequently asked questions
If you place your order now, the estimated arrival date for this product is:
Wednesday, Jul 1
Yes, absolutely! You may return this product for a full refund within 30 days of receiving it.
To initiate a return, please visit our Returns Center.
View our full returns policy here.
To initiate a return, please visit our Returns Center.
View our full returns policy here.
- Klarna Financing
- Affirm Pay in 4
- Affirm Financing
- Afterpay Financing
- PayTomorrow Financing
- Financing through Apple Pay
Learn more about financing & leasing here.
Top Amazon Reviews
Format: Hardcover
This is a comment I made to another review that I decided to post as a review as well. This is a brilliant, original, funny, thought provoking and informative book. At the time it was written there was nothing like it, and nothing surpasses it. I have learned far more from this book about scent, combinations of scent and the appreciation of them than I have from anything else I've encountered. It delighted me, and also instructed me on new and helpful ways to approach sensory evaluation in my work (wine). I absorbed more about approaching and categorizing sensory evaluation and bringing life, interest, precision and structure to it than I have from any number of oenology texts and professional articles. Not that most of those books or articles were bad, but that this book is that good. Yes, this is high level criticism from people who rank somewhere beyond "enthusiast" in their interest in the subject. What fascinates them, like what fascinates or delights most devotees of anything, goes well beyond what the majority of people would wish or need to know about the subject. Their encyclopedic knowledge, incisive writing and vast passion for the subject mean much more to me, however, than a paragraph of disclaimers about heat index, humidity, skin pH, age, the fact that you woke up grumpy and some sort of contrived "grading rubric" would. Also, I find them hilarious. Their positive reviews are rhapsodic, their negative ones, blistering - passion combined with piercing discernment. Honestly, I don't care what the mainstream world thinks of most perfumes. Give me the obsessive interests, strong opinions and vaulting enthusiasms of Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez over what some other reviewers seem to want - the po-faced seriousness and studied middle-of-the-road dullness and strained objectivity of a Consumer Reports article about perfume. If you're looking for The Consumer Reports Guide to Perfume and Fragrance, and little gray bubbles in columns, this isn't it. But how can a regular person benefit from such a work? Let's take an example nearly every American over a certain age knows. Siskel and Ebert. I think they were so successful at critiquing film for mainstream audiences because it was easy to get a sense of each critic's approach. You learned that you could trust their opinions, sometimes in a negative way. But they weren't just mainstream, they saw everything. They were film obsessives. That obsession sometimes helped some obscure movies find a wider audience, and encouraged millions of people to try some things they might have avoided otherwise, or to go watch an older masterpiece at home. This is the case for me with this book. It's pretty easy to spot where you and the reviewers will agree or disagree after a trip to the perfume counter, and then the book is more valuable still. Some critiques seem to suggest this book is for elitists, or the pretentious. I couldn't disagree more. Turin and Sanchez clearly believe perfume is a form of high art accessible to almost anybody. So if you're looking for something agreeable, solid, mainstream, and affordable they identify such products quite well. They heap praise on Old Spice, Stetson and Tommy Girl for example- that's pretty much the opposite of pretension to me. They mainly insist that whatever you wear, at any price point, be good. And they suggest, time and again, that price and enjoyability are rarely linked, except in the necessary expense of certain natural components. And they tell you who spends the money for "the good stuff" and who doesn't. Pretty much every technical criticism leveled against the book concerning both the subjective qualities and chemical difficulties of perfume analysis is acknowledged by the authors, by the way. In the end, you simply can't account for everything, for everyone, but with such a vast storehouse of reviews, with consistent voices, you can find a solid shared grounds for analysis quite easily in my opinion. Which is sort of the point of expert analysis and critique, really. There is also a line of criticism here that runs along the lines of "But I can just read stuff on the internet about this, it's the same. It's just like, someone's opinion, man." So, art criticism has an element of subjectivity to it. Who knew? That criticism entirely misses the point. The point is finding true experts who voices you trust. Sure, that trusted advice certainly could come from an online community. When I need a medical diagnosis, or financial advice, I trust the random collection of experts I find on the internet. Opinions are just opinions. Why would you ask a doctor what her opinion is when you can just ask the internet? Why read a PhD who theorized an entirely new, and quite possibly correct, mechanism for scent when it's just, like, his opinion man? The main trouble to me is that dozens of new perfumes are introduced every year. The book will fall ever further behind on new releases, and things that are being aggressively marketed until there is a new edition. But that's small potatoes to me. Almost all the greats, and classics they talk about are available to try somewhere, even via an internet sampler. That's where to start anyway, to learn how this stuff works, and how to translate the words into scents. (Finally the critiques of various other critics are sort of hilarious - "How can he rate this five stars when I absolutely hated it! Worthless!" )
...
show more
Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2016 by Xiane
EXCELLENT book, biting wit, right-to-the-point 1-liners. True, not a complete list, possibly somewhat biased (read the review mentioning Beyond Paradise by Estee Lauder), but there is no substitute for it out there... Read Turin's and Sanchez' words as a rough guide to inform your neocortex, but filter as much as you can (or care, or should I say wear?) through your own ofactory experience. You should only wear what you like, not what any one guru says is worth its while (but be mindful that others need to stand it also). His star ratings are a good guide for what's what: hyped dross (*), flat/boring blah (**), good/wearable (***), excellent/exquisite (****), unique/the ultimate (***** MIND YOU: not necessarily wearable). For those among you who are unsure/confused/need help/etc: most of the stuff you might want to wear is marked *** or ****. Tread lightly among the ***** rated, always test your "candidate fragrance" on a paper strip AND your own skin before plunking down serious money. Go to Neiman Marcus' or Saks' or Nordstrom's fragrance counters and ask for a few spritzed strips. Let them dry, then seal them inside (separate!) ziploc bags before putting them in your pocket, then walk away. Sniff "them" strips half-a-day or a day later, to see if you want to test them on your skin. Then go back. It's worth the trouble, 'cause it's gonna save you from making some very expensive mistakes... Yes, the listing is incomplete, Turin's views are it's highly idiosyncratic and sometimes "wrong" (as his co-author TS says somewhere in the book), but always pithy and witty with a dry sarcastic edge, thus highly entertaining. (What better concisely worded characterization for Equipage by Hermès than scent of a "crumpled gentleman farmer"? And so on, and on, and on... I'm not sure, though, why he flames Santos by Cartier, though. It's just as subtle and close-to-skin in its dry-down as Equipage... Well, I quess he's totally not free from fads, his own words sy it: "...in a style that has aged badly... If you like this stuff, get Yatagan." Well, I do wear Yatagan, and it smells quite differently from Santos!) For the ofactorily impaired or those whose sensibilities are (rather childishly) offended: you can read the lists of top-middle-bottom notes for 90+% of the existing perfumes on the [...] site for example (or on many of the Internet sites that sell perfumes). You can also read the various perfume blogs ad nauseam, often written by self-appointed "scent gurus" (is "gurette" the feminine for "teacher" in Hindi?). At most, you will get only a vague idea on how the various perfumes smell and very likely become REALLY CONFUSED, if you spend enough (actually: too much) time reading those reviews. There is no better telling about the esthetic experience elicited by the various perfumes than Turin's brief descriptions. Sample some perfumes that you're not familiar with, then read Turin's description, to get your own book-to-sensory-experience mapping (or key on how to decipher his critiques). Mind you, practicing (synthetic) chemists use their shnozolas as their first-line rough-and-ready alarm system as well as analytical tool, so Turin really knows what he is talking about. That said, "de gustibus et colorem non est disputandum" and that which you like might not necessarily have his blessing or be to his liking, but that's OK. After all, you use a perfume for causing you, and hopefully those around you, pleasure. Which also means: beware of loud, "foghorn" scents, out of deference for other people's personal space, if for nothing else. If you don't like someone to step on your toes, why should someone else enjoy having their nose "stepped on" by your fragrance? If you are interested in what's popular, go to [...] for a bunch of user reviews. Although, mind you, this is a self-selected set and therefore biased sample, but if you rather have a popular vote (vox populis) than an informed professional opinion, that's as close as you can get, since the "silent majority" is just that, silent on the subject. (But not necessarily fragrance/stench free!)
...
show more
Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2009 by ICH
Format: Hardcover
Turin argues in his earlier book, _The Secret of Scent_, that smell is not so much about memory and biology, as is widely believed, as it is about beauty and imagination. He believes, furthermore, that one of the highest achievements in perfumery is what he terms "abstraction," that is to say, the creation of olfactory accords that, while perhaps alluding to natural smells, are novel and resistant to definition. These aesthetic axioms (which he presumably shares with co-author/wife Tania Sanchez) are the basis of the evaluations in this book, and we, as readers, have no choice but to take them or leave them. These axioms lead the authors to prefer complex fragrances over simple ones, fragrances that develop over time to linear ones, original and/or unique fragrances over skillful executions of old ideas, "interesting" (even if vaguely unpleasant) fragrances over boring (even if pleasant) ones, etc. In a nutshell, they apply the same standards to perfume that other critics usually apply to other arts. They want perfumery to be taken seriously as an art form, and say as much. This is a legitimate view, and one to which I am highly sympathetic. That said, I think the authors overlook (or deliberately ignore) some of the factors that render the purely aesthetic appreciation of perfume difficult at best. First of all, perfumes are made to be worn. The final aesthetic effect of a fragrance is inseparable from the time, place, and person(s) involved. Of course this "framing" or contextualization effect is at work in all art forms, but it is arguably more important for perfumery than for others. Given the fact that perfumes are mixtures of chemicals, factors such as temperature, humidity, skin pH, decomposition, underlying body odor, age-related hyposmia, differing olfactory thresholds, etc., make this state-dependence even more crucial. And, regardless of what Turin might say, it is simply impossible to separate a fragrance from the associations (read: memories) it may evoke. Perhaps it's possible to "see" the Platonic form of a perfume behind all of these contingencies, but I highly doubt it. Our reactions to smells are visceral before they're intellectual or aesthetic, no doubt because our sense of smell is our primary sentinel against many toxins and pathogens. Individual differences in sensitivity to certain aromatic chemicals are highly significant and render any kind of objective discussion of fragrances impossible. We're not even working with the same equipment--it's like a society of people who are all partially blind to different colors trying to discuss color coordination. The fundamental variability of our olfactory apparatus, even before differences in taste are taken into account, makes the arrogance of some of the pronouncements in this book a bit galling. People *wear* fragrances (as opposed to sniffing them on strips--decidedly a minority pastime) for a variety of reasons: to make a statement, to find comfort or stimulation, to complement a particular ensemble, to seduce (and here the tastes of the quarry count far more than Apollonian meditations on beauty), and even, in some parts of the world, to mask the fact that they haven't bathed (it's no wonder that perfumery reached its pinnacle in Europe, where people didn't--and sometimes still don't--bathe regularly). Most people simply want a fragrance to make the day a little more pleasant for themselves and for those around them, not because they want to wear a work of "art" whose complexity and depth are going to make heads turn or spark a discussion about the relative merits of gourmand chypres and aromatic fougeres. Hence the incomprehension and hurt feelings that have greeted some of the harsher reviews in this book. Assuming that one buys into the premise that perfume is a pure art, the authors, in general, seem to have excellent (i.e., informed, refined, and considered) taste--except when it comes to reviewing the work of their friends. Turin, for example, rates Calice Becker's Beyond Paradise Men as one of the top ten masculines currently in production. Since it isn't very expensive I decided to take a chance and buy it blind on his recommendation. The highly synthetic headache-in-a-bottle I got stuck with isn't terrible, I suppose, but if it's one of the top ten masculines that money can buy in early 2008, then I'm Jacques Guerlain. In a different part of the book I discovered that Turin is good friends with Becker. Ah ha... I don't mean to suggest that Turin was cynically shilling for a friend, but rare is the man who is immune to the tender, insidious persuasions of friendship. I'm certain no one else on the planet would rate that fragrance quite so highly. Such are the dangers inherent in taking the word of a consummate industry insider without a huge grain of salt. Turin also awards points for historical importance to fragrances he can't even stand to be around--Opium, for example. This, I think, is taking the "perfume as art" shtick a little too far. When reviewing fragrances that knock their socks off (especially a fragrance saturated with some deep personal significance) both authors (but Sanchez in particular) tend to wax poetic and come off the rails in terms of actually describing the fragrance. Some of this lyricism is quite affecting, but alas too much of it sounds like an exercise for a creative writing workshop, and the straining for effect turns tiresome. The humor, too, is witty in spots but tends consistently towards juvenile mockery and inane plays on perfumes' names. All of these caveats aside, this is a very informative and often entertaining book. If you love fragrances, it is clearly a must-buy because it offers an excellent idea of which to sample next. If it educates consumers to stop buying and chides producers to stop making the cheap and and often hideous potions flooding the market, it will have done its job. I've learned a lot from the book and am grateful to the authors for having written it, but in the end it's more trustworthy as a Baedeker than as a Michelin.
...
show more
Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2008 by spheremusic
Format: Hardcover
I'm older now, and I have a little more disposable income (and a lot more self-confidence), so I have had great fun using this book's witty reviews to guide me in trying and purchasing perfumes. I never had more than one or two bottles of perfume on my vanity table before. Now I have several dozen because this book has made me see perfume in a whole new way. Yes, the book is a delight to read, but I have found it much more fun to actually use. Interestingly, I discovered just how interactive this book can be because I am a book lover. I was intrigued by the book's description of a perfume by L'Artisan Parfumeur called Dzing! The authors likened the perfume's scent to a "secondhand bookstore." I purchased a bottle on a whim when I happened across it on a trip to New York. It was only when I was browsing at my favorite used bookstore days later that it struck me. The vanilla overtones in this fabulous scent do indeed evoke the wonderful aroma of old paper. I smelled my wrist, I sniffed the terrific, familiar book-laden air around me, I felt a happy sense of discovery and I was hooked. Since reading this book, I have stuck it into my tote whenever I plan to be in a major department store. The book's vignettes ignite my curiosity and imagination. Take, for example, Thierry Mugler's Angel. The authors deem this scent a masterpiece. They tell the reader the history behind the scent -- that it started as a joke which combined the elements of a masculine and a feminine fragrance, but that in making that joke the perfumer came up with a truly new kind of scent. The authors point out that Angel exists in a "high energy state of contradiction. Many perfumes are beautiful or pleasant, but how many are exciting?" Then the authors deliver the zinger, which gives me a mental image for placing the perfume into my own life context. They say that Angel evokes that " woman in a film who seethes "He's so annoying!" and marries him in the end." I got that! I could then smell the contradiction and the attraction in the scent. I purchased a bottle because the scent now "speaks" to me in a way it never could have before I read this book. Is perfume necessary to my existence? No. When my children were small and we had meager time, money or energy, perfume was simply that handy bottle of Chanel No. 5 my mother had sent me for Christmas which I sprayed on to feel pretty on those infrequent dinner/movie dates with my husband (when we could get a babysitter.) Do I agree with everything the authors say about the various perfumes? No, but that's part of the fun. This book has opened a pleasant door for me. Perfume has become a fascinating foray into sensual exploration. I enjoy reading the metaphors and similes, the creative adjectives and backstories describing these perfumes, and then experimenting with the truth of them for myself. The authors have done something wonderful with this book. They have taken the mystique which advertising has always made sure surrounded fragrance and swept it away. But they have replaced that mystique with something better -- little personalities, if you will, for the different scents. Now browsing at the perfume counter has become like attending a cocktail party filled with famous people. Some will speak to you immediately. Some will stand back, but become friendly if you approach. Some are dull as dishwater. Some you will dislike. But being an insider at the party is exciting. I love that I have an invitation.
...
show more
Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2008 by D. Summerfield
Format: Hardcover
I love this book unequivocally. Turin and Sanchez are a fantastic writing team and comparisons with Nabokov and other masters of verbal pyrotechnics are not off the mark. This book is a perfect antidote to the anodyne 21st century refusal to discern between grades of excellence. Let me start with an example not related to perfume: have you ever met produces "just as good" music as that of Beethoven? Have you ever tried to argue the case that Shakespeare is not better than any teenaged poetaster? Yes, we are all equally of one genius! Not! Turin and Sanchez combine their penetrating noses with pungent prose and almost supernaturally divine lyricism to examine the world of perfume. If you read this book with some care (and I've spent many hours on it already) it can be an education for your own nose. Get your perfume collection and try two or three a day. If you don't have a perfume collection, go to the department store and try two or three. If you want a perfume collection, slowly procure some of the ones that they recommend. I learned a couple of things already: not to avoid "Lovely" because it's associated with a fairly main-stream celebrity and to give "Tommy Girl" a try. I don't think I've ever given TG a sniff because the names seems so--well, Charlie's Angels or something. I need to get over that. I also have a long list of things I want to try. Each perfume reviewed gets a two word snappy description, such as "fruity barbershop", "cheap shampoo", and "carnation booze". Of course there are many superlatives as well. Then a lengthier review follows. I especially enjoyed the discussions of perfumes that are rated "recommended" or "masterpiece". Many reviews are really educations in themselves such as the reviews for "Bandit," "Derby," "No. 5," "Pleasures," "White Linen" and many others. These are comprised of beautifully crafted sentences that manage to pull off a hat-trick of being lyrically poetical, scientifically informative, and intensely beautiful and witty. Some of the shorter reviews are more sardonic, even cruel, but accurate. Just because J. Lo. signs off on a perfume does not make it pantheonistic and her reps should learn that. I think that the darker reviews seem correct, insofar as my familiarity goes, which (to be honest) is about as far as Muncie, Indiana, but we don't all get to Paris as much as we'd like. I love the writing; I love the information; I think that the list is fairly well-inclusive but here's where I part ways a bit: too much time is spent on celebrities: why not mention the ones that are outstanding. Don't even give Paris Hilton a line. Why include Britney Spears if you omit Alan Cumming? Some newer, smaller houses get short shrift--if this book is revised, I'd suggest looking at only a couple of Bond No. 9's and adding some more of the smaller houses. Better still why not a history of great houses or almost great houses? Perhaps an idea for a new books? Houses ranging from the old and venerable to the new. I did love it that Andy Tauer got his props; I would have loved a more thorough study of more recent "houses" or "niche houses". What Turin and Sanchez do with some venerable names such as Caron, Guerlain, Creed, Chanel, Lauder, etc. is wonderful. Make certain that you read the first 49 pages--it's an education; almost a full-blown college course for the price of one book! And this guide should not merely be an encyclopedic reference but something worth reading from beginning to end; something worth dipping into at random and something to keep by your bedside table along with a good volume of poetry. We've got Wordsworth and Coleridge; we have Astaire and Rogers, we have Lennon and McCartney, and now we have Turin and Sanchez amongst the great collaborators of art.
...
show more
Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2008 by Natalie
Format: Hardcover
Five stars for the writing. I cannot remember a book that gave me more pleasure. It's a great read, rich with fascinating details about scents I've never tried. I'm not a perfumista, don't read the myriad perfume blogs, and frankly, don't even know why I like the perfumes I like. Besides reading this book for fun - especially the hilarious one-star reviews -- I'm using it to learn. It's a road map to hundreds of perfumes to try. I spray those little sniff strips, later seal each in a plastic snack bag so I can re-evaluate it for days and attempt to understand the experts' points of view. Then I sleep with one strip on my pillow for one night, hoping for wonderful dreams. Aromatics Elixir produced technicolor giggles. Had I not read this book, I would never have looked to Clinique for a fabulous perfume. Another discovery is good ole (manly) Stetson, described here as "a crisp classical feminine oriental...gorgeous, as rugged and masculine as the lingerie level at Saks..." Who knew? I'm now using this wonderful el cheapo as air spray in my musty book lined office. I've admired Luca since stumbling upon Chandler Burr's The Emperor of Scent at the library (and still like vibrations better than molecules), then read his Secrets of Scent, at least the civilian-friendly first half, and ordered my Amazon copy of this guidebook months ago. Who wouldn't gravitate toward a scientist who, as Burr reported, was scrambling for a Nobel Prize on one hand and on the other describing an iconic perfume as something that should be hanging in a Moscow taxi. Luca has major creds, but who is this Tanya person? She won me over on page 12, describing how people get interested in perfume. For me, it's the Tabu factor: Mumsy always wore it and from my earliest days I thought the world smelled of (the old) Tabu, Lucky Strikes, martinis and snowflake-sprinkled fur. And then of the wonderful old greasy green Replique, Joy, Zizanie and Ma Griffe my father brought home from Paris and my first purchase, Jolie Madame. What was not to love? I appropriated the Replique and wore it to grade school and on into adulthood, miss it still, and have no idea what it was I loved about it. As Tanya said, all perfume lovers have long, fond memories. It's sad that so many older perfumes have been discontinued or reformulated beyond recognition and I agree with an earlier reviewer that critiques of some discontinued classics would have been welcome. I may not understand the structure of perfume, but I do know about the structure of books. This is reasonably good but another few months of work might have produced a masterpiece. I wish the publisher's production people had thought harder about a few things: First, the white cover may be striking but it's impractical for a book designed to be schlepped back and forth to the store. Ditto the page size. I'd prefer a wider page with room to make notes. Actually, a trade paperback with a binding that lies flat would have been ideal. The 12-page star index is jammed and nearly unreadable. I miss having a real index. Eliminating some inconsequential perfumes that garnered only a one-sentence critique would have freed up space for an index, an opportunity to list by type, by company, and by designer. But that's technical stuff. I love this book enough to give it five stars anyway.. It contributes color, wit, and delight to an increasingly unrecognizable world where control freaks nail "fragrance free zone" signs on far too many doors and wearing perfume is considered as undesirable as smoking. In my city, anyway. Thanks to this book, perfume sales surely will increase.
...
show more
Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2008 by Barbara Nichols
Format: Paperback
This is one of 3 books on perfumes or colognes I bought recently. I was partially curious what my favorite scents would be described as "similar to", so I could go try those out too. Also curious whether they liked what I like. Not much luck there. I have about 150 different bottles but not even a half dozen of them were described or reviewed to begin with. Those that were, were pretty much given reviews with a snobby attitude by the writers. So, I suppose I'll have to look elsewhere for some sort of reference book that says (for example) "...If you like Guerlain's "Vetiver", you'll also like (whatever)." I may also try some of the colognes referred to, just in case I HAVE really only been scraping along the bottom and these 5 star brands blow my nose away, so to speak. To compare to another sense, that of taste: I'll grant that I have a very pedestrian approach with wines, for example. If a wine tastes like cherry cough syrup, that's close to perfect for me. I found a nice raspberry ice wine that came close to that. All the same, I will concede that most people have different and most likely far more discerning and sophisticated taste in liquors than I do. More power to them. I like what I like, though I try to be open to trying new things. Maybe it'll be the same with scents as it has been with wine.
...
show more
Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2023 by Sandy R
Format: Hardcover
last night i read this book for hours and it has left me with the *real* hope that it will make a difference for the way the perfume houses treat their classic fragrances (and let me tell you, i had given up on that, resigning myself to the fact that the general culture of greed will always prevail: cutting corners, cheapening, slashing and burning and mangling and destroying. but -- just maybe -- this book will help stem the destruction.) what i mean is that the authors give concrete information about changes older fragrances have gone through -- cutting through the hype and obfuscation of the marketing departments insisting that what they sell us under the same name is the same formulation and juice -- when we *know* it's not. sanchez and turin simply state (IN WRITING that is not as ephemeral feeling as blogs are and with the clout of turin's name behind it) what we all know is the truth: *classics have been changed* (and how they've changed they will tell us too, in their own, highly irreverent, highly entertaining, and yes, highly subjective ways.) my hope is that this book will have an impact on the fragrance industry -- that it will make them think a little more before they slaughter classic fragrances, and fight a little more to be able to keep using ingredients that have been used for a long time, and that *make* the fragrance. that they will at least have to contend with a general knowledge that they *in fact* have made changes, and that they will be more transparent with the changes they *have* made: telling us what and why and by whom. and therefore, i do hope there will be a "perfumes. the guide. part 2" which lists as many of the classic (reformulated and/or discontinued) fragrances as possible (since many have been left out.) it's a true public service turin and sanchez are doing us here. and then there is the fact that the thing is so much fun to read! i have not been as happy with a perfume book since edward michael's "perfume legends" about 10 years ago (and turin's original "le guide" in french, which i could barely read, my french being so bad.) and lastly and for what it's worth: chandler burr, who i used to judge pompous and disliked based on his -- sometimes pompous -- writing is redeemed in my eyes by sanchez' mentioning him in her acknowledgements: she's thanking burr for "telling fragrance pr people to get used to it" and she can only mean that he told them that perfume writing is not all pr and hype -- and that the first amandment applies to fragrance-writing as well. and so: a wonderfully entertainining book, this book. but also: an important book. so go and buy it, everybody -- if for nothing else than for the hope that it will instill a measure of fear in the fragrance industry's heart. (not affiliated blablabla)
...
show more
Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2008 by Steve George