Perfumes: The Guide

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Perfumes: The Guide

Editorial Review

"The first book of its kind: a definitive guide to the world of perfume Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez are experts in the world of scent. Turin, a renowned scientist, and Sanchez, a longtime perfume critic, have spent years sniffing the world's most elegant and beautiful as well as some truly terrible perfumes. In Perfumes: The Guide, they combine their talents and experience to review more than twelve hundred fragrances, separating the divine from the good from the monumentally awful. Through witty, irreverent, and illuminating prose, the reviews in Perfumes not only provide consumers with an essential guide to shopping for fragrance, but also make for a unique reading experience. Perfumes features introductions to women's and men's fragrances and an informative frequently asked questions section including: What is the difference between eau de toilette and perfume? How long can I keep perfume before it goes bad? What's better: splash bottles or spray atomizers? What are perfumes made of? Should I change my fragrance each season? Perfumes: The Guide is an authoritative, one-of-a-kind book that will do for fragrance what Robert Parker's books have done for wine. Beautifully designed and elegantly illustrated, this book will be the perfect gift for collectors and anyone who's ever had an interest in the fascinating subject of perfume."

The first book of its kind: a definitive guide to the world of perfume
Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez are experts in the world of scent. Turin, a renowned scientist, and Sanchez, a longtime perfume critic, have spent years sniffing the world's most elegant and beautiful--as well as some truly terrible--perfumes. In Perfumes: The Guide, they combine their talents and experience to review more than twelve hundred fragrances, separating the divine from the good from the monumentally awful. Through witty, irreverent, and illuminating prose, the reviews in Perfumes not only provide consumers with an essential guide to shopping for fragrance, but also make for a unique reading experience.
Perfumes features introductions to women's and men's fragrances and an informative "frequently asked questions" section including:
· What is the difference between eau de toilette and perfume?
· How long can I keep perfume before it goes bad?
· What's better: splash bottles or spray atomizers?
· What are perfumes made of?
· Should I change my fragrance each season?
Perfumes: The Guide is an authoritative, one-of-a-kind book that will do for fragrance what Robert Parker's books have done for wine. Beautifully designed and elegantly illustrated, this book will be the perfect gift for collectors and anyone who's ever had an interest in the fascinating subject of perfume.

Picking a Perfect Perfume

For Perfumes: The Guide, Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez tested nearly 1,500 fragrances--some glorious, some foul. Here they offer some humble advice on finding something worth loving among the stinkers.

1. Smell top to bottom
Perfumes usually unfold in three (often very different) stages: the sparkling first few minutes are the fragrance's top note, followed by its true personality, known as the heart note, and ending with the base note, aka the drydown, hours later. Something you love at the counter you may loathe by the parking lot. We recommend top-to-bottom tests on skin and on paper, since some scents that disappoint on the heat of skin may shine on your shirtsleeve.

2. Write it down
Bring a pen to write names on paper test strips, so you're not in anguish hours later, trying to recall which is the third scent from the left that transports you to Shangri-La. Keep a cheap, possibly extremely trashy paperback on hand, so you can store strips between pages to keep them separate.

3. Rest your nose
Noses tune out, which is why you can smell your friends' homes but not your own. Smell no more than five scents per day on paper strips and try on only the best one or two, to keep your nose reliable.

4. Check the radiance
To get a good sense of how the perfume will smell to other people as you walk past, try spraying a test strip and leaving it in the room while you step out for a bit. Come back fifteen minutes later and breathe in: that's the radiance.

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
• Very entertaining
  
  I am a wine writer and interested in sensory perception. So I not only learned a lot, but the reviews of the many perfumes on the market were very well written and in some cases wildly funny. Ed Schwartz
• a convert
  I never really liked perfume very much, I always associated it with department store headaches. But I have always been fascinated with scent and WANTED to like perfume. The manufacturer's descriptions always sound so lovely and then they smell terrible, so its impossible to know what to look for.
  I loved reading the Emperor of Scent, and after reading that book and now the Perfume guide I was able to find a couple of perfumes that are perfect for me, based on Luca and Tania's recommendations. The... more info
• God, I love this book!
  If you love perfume, and I mean REALLY love perfume, then this book is for you.
  It gives you details on every perfume on the market (and many that aren't but can still be acquired on the internet) and not just the facts but the EXPERIENCE of what it's like to sniff each one. I may not always agree with their opinion, but this is irrelevant: they have given me an idea; something to work with.
  I am a person who will literally follow someone down the street if they are wearing a perfume I like. In... more info
• Fantastic read
  After reading an outstanding review in the New Yorker for this book, I went out and bought it, and have loved it. As that review says, it is a model for anyone who is interested in aesthetics, particularly talking about food and wine. It is a fantastic combination of art (whimsical, evocative, and funny descriptions) and science (describing the chemical families and compounds that make up perfumes). The authors provide a five star rating system for lots of perfumes, which makes for amusing reading (a friend... more info

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