The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York

The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York
by Chandler Burr

The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York
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Book Summary Information

Author: Chandler Burr
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2009-01-06
ISBN: 0312425775
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Picador

Book Reviews of The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York

Book Review: A (mostly) Interesting Insight
Summary: 4 Stars

I have been fascinated with perfume in general since the age of 10, and I very much enjoyed Suskind's Perfume: Story of a Murderer, so I was delighted to come across an ARC of The Perfect Scent.
The book was full of information about many sides of the perfume industry, of which the general consumer has no clue. Though I love scent, I had never given much thought to the agonizing process of creating it, naming it, packaging it, and marketing it. I more or less took it for granted that some content team of chemists in white coats mixed a drop of this and a dab of that from cool glass pipettes and voila!
The book tends to drag in the middle third as Burr gets into the scientific technicalities. My eyes glazed over when I got to the lists of ethyl this and benzone that. Somewhere, my high school chemistry teacher is laughing.
The most interesting part of the book for me was SJP's involvement in the creation of her scent, Lovely (which I am now determined to samlple). I had always suspected that the celebrities of celeb perfumes were nothing but a name and picture, and this book confirmed that suspicion. SJP is an exception, and I have a new-found respect for her.
I cringed at times, particularly at Burr's description of animalics (comparing one of them to various odiferous body parts of a man). Though he says "there's simply no other way to describe it," I think surely there must have been. My other beef with the writing style is the repetition and overuse of extremes like "exquisite" and "extraordinarily." These words lose their power when used on every other page.
Overall, I enjoyed the book, feel somewhat enlightened, and would recommend it to anyone interested in the inner workings of the fragrance industry.

Summary of The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York

The Perfect Scent is the thrilling inside story of the global perfume industry, told through two creators working on two very different scents. The first is commissioned by the French luxury brand Herm?s, and developed by a perfumer named Jean-Claude Ellena, who begins his search for the scent on the banks of the Nile. The second is a celebrity fragrance, developed in New York by movie star Sarah Jessica Parker and a team of perfumers from a global conglomerate. Chalder Burr, the New York Times's perfume critic, spent a year behind the scenes watching both creators at work. His thrilling narrative follows each scent from the initial concept to the worldwide launch. The Perfect Scent is the story of two daring creators, two very different scents, and a billion-dollar industry that runs on the invisible magic of perfume.

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