Writing about perfume, and smells in general, is one of the greatest challenges for a journalist/author: how to evoke scents, with words…? But over the years, quite a few have done so very, very successfully. And if you want to build a ‘perfume bookshelf’, to deepen your knowledge of perfumery, this is where we recommend you start. (We’ve given each title stars out of five, as a guide to which we think are the most important, and the all-round best reads. Nothing less than a three features here, though – so we think any of them are a worthwhile read.)
As you become ever-more-obsessed (and we know how that feels), you may want to add to your collection – and of course, we’ll add to this section whenever new releases catch our eye…
NB Looking for out-of-print perfume titles in secondhand bookstores can be like searching for a needle in a haystack. If you’re in a hurry, we generally recommend www.abebooks.com, which links thousands of secondhand bookstores around the world, while www.amazon.com can be a source for remaindered books…
The Book of Perfume
The Book of Perfume, by Elisabeth Barillé and Catherine Laroze. Out of print, but gloriously illustrated – a real wallow in fragrance history. (And if all history books were this seductive, we’d have concentrated better in lessons.) It follows the story of ingredients from around the world, field to flacon, exploring the sense of smell, perfume bottle design – and a section on perfume imagery in advertising and marketing. As a finale, a practical section: how to wear perfume, the fragrance houses/families/great perfume stores. A touch out-of-date, but one for the birthday wishlist or ‘Dear Santa’ requests.
****
At Amazon
The Book of Scented Things – 100 Contemporary Poems About Perfume
The Book of Scented Things is the culmination of a unique aromatic and poetical experiment – an anthology based on this original concept of deliberately provoking with perfume and collecting the results. Hence we discover poems of deeply personal childhood memories, that relate directly to a sense of place and more deep-seated philosophical longings. We all know that fragrance can regularly provoke such feeling within us, but generally it’s left to the beauty press and perfumistas to wax lyrical about – and fascinating to read the results of poets being directly influenced in this way. Editor Jehanne Dubrow expands on the creative process in the introduction. ‘We were surprised to discover how many other poets already recognised the fleeting, narrative pleasure of scent.’ Describing how many of the poets already identified themselves as ‘perfume nerds’ and that even those who had little knowledge or previous experience of fragrance could see the potential of the project and were pleased to be involved. We really enjoyed reading so many of the poems – the contrasting voices and styles, and especially those little lightning bolts in recognition of a shared feeling or idea about the ever-changing contextual nature of smell, and what that provokes in all of us…
At Amazon
The Diary of a Nose: A Year in the Life of a Parfumeur
The Diary of a Nose: A Year in the Life of a Parfumeur, by Jean-Claude Ellena. A slip of a book, this, by one of the world’s most revered perfumers – now the in-house nose at Hermès. (His most celebrated creation is probably First, for Van Cleef and Arpels.) A quiet and thoughtful man who works in his own hilltop atelier well away from the hustle and bustle of the commercial perfumery world, this chronicles Jean-Claude Ellena’s thoughts, inspirations and global travels while working on new launches. Most fascinating to us is the short section at the back in which Jean-Claude shares some of the harmonies and accords he’s perfected over the years: his aim is to create a specific scent with the minimum of notes. Who knew that you could conjure up the scent of sugared almonds with just vanillin, benzoin and benzaldehyde…? (Although what’s clear from this book is that haute perfumery is anything but simple, actually…)
***
At Amazon
The Essence of Perfume
The Essence of Perfume, by Roja Dove. Ex-Guerlain, now with his own Haute Parfumerie in Harrods, Roja’s is very much a coffee table book covering everything from extraction methods to bottle-makers, the sense of smell to classic scents, raw materials to fragrance families - each subject brought alive with glossy visuals. Lovely shots of historic perfume bottles – and for the true perfume geek, a massive bibliography/reading list at the back of the book which would probably occupy you for a lifetime. We’ve a hunch it’s going out of print and you may need to track it down on a secondhand site, nowadays.
***
At Amazon
The Little Book of Perfumes: 100 Classics
The Little Book of Perfumes: 100 Classics, by Dr. Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez. This is the shorter version of Perfumes: The Guide, if you can’t stretch to the full, hefty book, focusing on what they consider to be the 100 greatest fragrances of all time – from Chanel No. 5 to Guerlain’s Jicky – although frustratingly, some of the featured scents aren’t available any longer, even if you Google them. (Including Coty’s Emeraude, Chypre, or Jacques Fath’s Iris Gris.) If you do own the original book, don’t bother with this – it’s simply the five-star reviews which featured in that.
***
At Amazon
The Natural History of the Senses
The Natural History of the Senses, by Diane Ackerman. The title doesn’t do this justice: Diane Ackerman’s writing is exquisite – we’d call it poetic, actually - exploring and explaining not just the sense of smell, but all the senses. In the first chapter – Smell – she looks at scent and memory, at roses, at sneezing, at the way our health (and what we eat) impacts on our body odour. You’ll learn answers to questions you never knew you had, and though this book is over 20 years old, it’s timeless. Really, one of our favourite, favourite books on the subject – and the other four chapters are a ‘gift-with-purchase’.
*****
At Amazon
The New Perfume Handbook
The New Perfume Handbook by Nigel Groom. A true textbook – and priced accordingly; it’s out of print and sniffing out a copy on the web might is a real investment, and only (we’d say) for the really serious perfume obsessive. (Though of course there’s always the library…) But if you do get your hands on one, it’s especially useful for info about ingredients (natural and synthetic), ‘perfumespeak’ terminology and fragrance brands. (Though of course we do cover a lot of that territory on this very site.)
****
At Amazon
The Perfect Scent
The Perfect Scent, by Chandler Burr. Chandler Burr was for a time The New York Times’s own perfume critic, and this is his ‘year in the life’: a sneaky peek behind the scenes over the span of a year, in which he’s given ‘above-top-secret’ access to the world of fragrance creation. On one side of the Atlantic, he gets an insider’s view of the relationship between Sex and the City’s Sarah Jessica Parker and Coty, while launching her acclaimed debut scent Lovely. On the other, he’s invited to spend time alongside Hermès’s (then) newly-anointed in-house perfumer, Jean-Claude Ellena, while he works on Un Jardin Sur le Nil. Chandler Burr’s an arch observer, with a terrific turn of phrase that brings scent to vibrant life.
****
At Amazon
The Perfume Bible
A beautifully illustrated guide to the world of perfumery, by The Perfume Society‘s Founders Jo Fairley and Lorna McKay - The Perfume Bible brings together everything you need to know about fragrance, from scent families, fragrant facts, the fascinating history behind much-loved perfume houses and independently run niche brands only previously known by a select few industry-insiders - we may be biased, but it's a must for every fragrance-lover (as well as being a fabulous gift). It’s an encyclopaedia of all things fragrant – from how to go about building a perfume ‘wardrobe’ to a line-up of the '100 perfumes to try before you die'. Seeking to intrigue and de-mystify the more confusing aspects of perfumery - how many people know exactly what a 'Chypre' perfume actually is? - you’ll discover the journey of ingredients from field to flacon, a run-down of the best perfume shops in the world and the history of scent – 192 pages of our favourites shared with those curious to begin their own fragrant journey, or perfumistas already well on the path...
It’s available to our VIP Subscribers at the special price of £16.25 – and to non-subscribers for £25 (including postage & packaging)
The Perfume Guide
The Perfume Guide, by Susan Irvine. Categorises into fragrance families 200 of the world’s best-known fragrances (at the time of publication, which means many have now disappeared forever), with information about families, perfumers, and the stories behind some of the real classics. A worthwhile addition to a bookshelf if you find it in a secondhand bookstore – or Amazon usually has discounted copies here.
***
The Perfume Lover: A Personal History of Scent
The Perfume Lover: A Personal History of Scent, by Denyse Beaulieu. Denyse is a highly-respected perfume blogger Grain de Musc - who writes quite beautifully here about how her childhood passion for perfume became a life-long quest, enticing her to Paris and a career as a fragrance critic. At the heart of this story, though, is how a conversation with L’Artisan Parfumeur perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour turned into a collaboration to produce an actual perfume, Séville a l’Aube – a divine orange-blossom-fulled Oriental. A truly excellent read and a great insight into the art of fragrance creation.
****
At Amazon
The Secret History of No. 5: The Intimate History of the World’s Most Famous Perfume
The Secret History of No. 5: The Intimate History of the World’s Most Famous Perfume, by Tilar J. Mazzeo. For 90 years, Chanel No. 5’s been the world’s best-known and bestselling fragrance – but the story behind it is more complicated than is often let on... Chanel-o-philes will want to add this to their bookshelf: it’s part-biography of ‘Mademoiselle’ (whose own extraordinary story is interwoven with that of No. 5), and part an exploration of the countless facets of the fragrance immortalised by Marilyn Monroe as ‘the only thing I wear to bed’, and by Andy Warhol in the silkscreen which appears on this book’s cover. Throw in a bit of information on the art of perfumery itself, and what you have is a book that made many Goodreads reviewers want to go out and buy a bottle itself.
***
At Amazon
The Secret of Scent
The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell, by Luca Turin. Luca Turin writes so beautifully about fragrance: he’s one of the writers best able to conjure up a smell in words, and this is partly his personal journey - from working as a biophysicist through to working in the fragrance industry, using his theory of smell (or olfaction) to design entirely new fragrances and molecules. In this book, Luca looks at many raw materials and explains the science of smell in an accessible way that cleverly brings the subject alive for anyone who flunked chemistry at school. If you’ve ever wondered how smell works, he has a darned good try at cracking the code here.
At Amazon
