We just read that Kindle sales are dwindling.
This should reverse the trend (although you can of course also get a Kindle App on your iPad.)
Last Saturday we had the immense joy of hosting a tea with Luca Turin for our VIP Subscribers and some blogger friends. A full account will be up on this site at the beginning of next week (it’s epic).
Luca was hugely engaging, funny, warm – and had the room spellbound, while he explored a series of new-to-him scents plundered from the shelves of Les Senteurs.
The revered author of Perfumes: The Guide revealed that this week, his Folio Columns 2003-2014 – written for Swiss magazine NZZ Folio, and which could previously only be enjoyed in German – would be published on Amazon Kindle. (With a foreword by his wife, editor and Perfumes: The Guide co-author, Tania Sanchez.)
This morning, a wonderful e-mail popped into our in-box with the e-book, gifted by Luca and sent with ‘hugs’. (Awwww.) Frankly, we’ve had to peel ourselves away from reading it simply to share this with you now. (Oops, there goes the afternoon…)
We think it’s fair to say that Luca writes about perfume more lyrically, more poetically, more philosophically, occasionally more coruscatingly (but with more wit) than anyone on the planet.
Buy Folio Columns 2003-2014 here
If you love perfume (and own a Kindle or an iPad), it is probably the most enjoyable £4.61 you will EVER spend.
And if you need any convincing at all, here’s a taster – Luca’s thoughts when he opened an ’embarrassingly luxurious’ package from Chanel at the time they launched Les Exclusifs.
‘As I quickly went through the package, my mood broke through the clouds, going from overcast to what aviators call “severe clear” in minutes. In my opinion, these six permanently change the landscape of perfumery by proving that there is, after all, a modern Grand Manner. They are Coromandel, a soft patchouli in the style of [Serge] Lutens’s Borneo 1834, but more refined; No.18, an iris-rose that sits next to the defunct Iris Gris in heaven; 28 La Pausa, an iris-violet named after a house Coco Chanel owned; Bel Respiro, a fresh-aldehydic named for another house; and an Eau de Cologne that goes straight to the top of its class.
Every one of these is as good as it gets, but one gave me an emotion I hadn’t felt for years. It was the thrill of feminine beauty, the pang of pain and longing you get in ‘Rear Window’ when Grace Kelly breezes in, throws her coat on a chair and saunters over to give James Stewart a kiss.
It is 31 Rue Cambon, after Chanel’s Paris address, and the best chypre in 30 years. With current perfumery restrictions on oakmoss, a new great chypre had seemed impossible. Remarkably, Chanel used a pepper-iris accord instead to achieve a classical effect in a completely novel way. If you only have room for six perfumes in your life, clear your shelf.’
