The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York,   ISBN:9780312425777

Customer Rating: 

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.

Customer Rating: 

I bought this with much anticipation. His portrait of Luca Turin is one of my favorite books.
However, this title is much different. Burr is star struck, and this story just went on too darn long. The end of the book was completely forgettable.
Worse, his incredibly homo-erotic descriptions including something along the lines of "testicle odor", are so ridiculous that I had to put the book down. I am not a prude, nor homophobic AT ALL, but it was just not appropriate.
This goes straight to Paperback Swap. Maybe someone else wants to know about how sweaty balls smell in relation to womens perfume.

Customer Rating: 

I'm of two minds with Chandler Burr. He seems to have unprecedented access to perfume industry insiders, and the kind of personality, perseverance, and patience that it takes to deal with difficult types that seem to permeate the entire field. He can get information out of scientists in chem labs, celebrities, artists, and high-powered executives, so he must be adept at asking the right questions and tolerating ridiculous egos.

He fills this book with so many interesting tidbits about perfume and scent that I have frequently quoted from it when trying to make a point about fragrance to a friend or colleague. I love the bits of science that are injected into this book, the overviews of molecules and their uses in many industries. The information is so fun (and for me, mind-boggling), that I have read the book several times.

That said, his writing style drives me just about batty. I get so tired of his sentences structure, his fragments that are meant to drive home a point, that I have to stop reading every few pages and put the book down. As other reviewers have noted, he is slightly obsessed with describing exactly how each and every individual is dressed (always to the nines, no matter what); on one hand, this can get a bit grating, but on the other, it does help the reader visualize and mentally sort all of the players in these stories. If you speak French, you may be thrilled with the French sentences that are inserted every other paragraph or so. If you do not speak French, you might still find these delightful, as they are helpfully translated. If you are a grumpy person like me, you might wonder if Burr isn't showing off just a wee bit.

If you are interested in fragrance, this book is a must-read. Don't let the fact that Burr has some rather startling pronouncements about smells terrify you - he might be wrong.

Customer Rating: 

Yes he talks about Sarah Jessica Parker, her perfume, and follows the story of the creation of another perfume.
Those stories are somewhat interesting but they could be told in 25 pages.
The rest is descriptions that will bore you, about how wondefullly dressed this or that person is, how chic, how of much of the elite, etc. He also writes in a pompous way that makes the book NOT a pleasure to read, but the opposite- And he talks about HIMSELF a lot more than it is needed.
For example, the man writes Et cetera many times, because he cannot be like the rest of the mortals and write it as one word like in modern times. He likes his own style so he repeats it all over. He also tries his hand at comparisons (and believe, he is a journalist writing and NOT a literature writer), so he makes a comparison between someone not showing up and the DISAPPEARED in Argentina!
a) so you need to be an "worldly" reader to understand the comparison but me, as an ARGENTINIAN, find it COMPLETELY offensive- you don't JOKE with the hurt of a country and so many people kidnapped and killed by the military regime! So the use of it is just SELF SERVING because he wants to show of-
b) he does THE SAME with a comment about the Concentration camps/holocaust.

If you want to buy it go ahead, you WILL learn something about the industry, but do not support this clown. If you end up having some of the ideas I have please come and post yours as well.

Customer Rating: 

The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York is a marvelous book! I wanted to smell every perfume mentioned, every molecule described, every successful perfume and every failed perfume.

It is the story of the development of two perfumes as reported by the Scent Critic for T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Chandler Burr. The first is Sarah Jessica Parker's Lovely with Coty, and the other is Un Jardin sur le Nil, created by master perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena for Hermes. They are two very different stories that work well together.

The chapters alternate between the two stories, more or less chronologically, with interesting forays into the history of perfumes and scents, particular perfumes, and the people who create them.

The Hermes story takes place in France. Burr quotes quite a bit in French, but puts the English translation immediately after, without any fanfare, so that you get the sense of what the people are saying but also understand the meaning of what they say.

I particularly liked the author's comments about scents he likes and dislikes and his descriptions of people. He brings people to life vividly. He also explains the science of scents and perfume in an understandable yet detailed way. Most rewarding of all, his language is very poetic. Here's his description of Un Jardin sur le Nil:

"It is a perfume that smells like early evening on an island where it is always summer. It is the smell sunlight makes coming out of a blue sky, the air scented with the tang made as the light warms the smooth unblemished peel of the greenest mangoes hanging from the branches of the young trees, just out of reach."

And, as a humorous antidote to the lushness of his perfume descriptions, here's his description of a men's cologne that he hates: "This is the chemical reek of deep-space travelers frozen in goo in suspended animation."

The only criticism I have is simply that the industry is complex, with a convoluted history and mode of operation. The many names, perfumers, perfumes, and corporate players were sometimes a bit hard to keep straight.

However, all in all, the book is humorous, witty, full of love for the subject, and crammed with interesting information. I thoroughly enjoyed it.