Perfumes The Guide 2018

I’ve never in my life written an Amazon review for anything. I was besotted by the first Perfumes the Guide, and am beside myself that this next installment is just as whip smart, honest, opinionated, intelligent, challenging, hilariously witty and viciously excoriating as the first. I am so happy right now. There is nothing more enjoyable than experts doing their thing, but very often expertise ends up meaning a gloss of pomposity - see art speak, some talk about chefs and their ‘journey’, movies that are all emperor’s new clothes, theatre performances where the texture of the seat in front of you is more interesting than any of the overheated gammon in the programme. These two are experts who bring their two wildly varying life experiences to inform the way they talk about smell (like dancing about architecture, only it WORKS) in the most exhilarating, elucidating and exciting way. I’d like to have some kind of badge or sticker to wear so other people who feel as passionately as I do about just how impressive their combined knowledge is and how very entertaining they make this art form would understand that they should talk to me IMMEDIATELY about how brilliant it is. The secret Luca-Tania hand gesture of an invisible spritz on the left wrist and an all-knowing sniff. Yes, I know, me too! It’s like a potted history of the world - polite and filthy, polished and raw, social life, pure sex, marketing, delusion, hope, chancerism, bold-faced lying, the sad diminution wrought by time, carelessness and capitalism, chemicals, storytelling, flowers, food, childhood memories, alien forms, history, the future, and magical talent. A Dickensian, sprawling, complicated, rewarding, beautiful clever and honest book. I couldn’t recommend it more highly. Loved every word.

Turin and Sanchez’s monumental book Perfumes: The A-Z Guide was profound, necessary, passionate and compelling. It stimulated an evolutionary leap in perfumery that changed the landscape and inspired hundreds of new perfumers to use their talent and imagination. It resulted in a world of beauty no one thought possible. It was so vivid, stylish, hilarious and technically good, even critics with little interest in perfume considered it one of the best books of the year. Perfumes The Guide 2018 is a different approach that covers all kinds of fragrances, but puts even more emphasis on niche and artisan perfumes. Like the first book, its substantial, extremely easy to read and highly entertaining, .but for many people this book is a great assist to those attempting to understand and define the genuinely worthwhile creations. Perfumery has changed radically. It's mind-blowing. Many of today's fragrances have to be smelled to be believed, and to generate context. The book focuses, not upon what is found at Neiman Marcus, (etc etc), with their corporate, mass consciousness, profit generating agendas, but rather the wave of perfumes that represent craftsmanship and art (as was centuries ago). That sometimes go to great lengths for the ingredients (and sometimes don't) to develop something of beauty. The pioneers, scientists, explorers, who are often more interested in what they can find, and combine, and present. At a time when so many people are simply looking to take your money, Perfumes The Guide 2018 is more relevant than ever. Luxury may have lost its luster, but this book will help you find the good stuff.

I am well familiar with the earlier edition (Perfumes: The A-Z Guide) and frequently reread snippets of it. The rave points: 1) all-new material. No rehashes of fragrances reviewed in the earlier edition. 2) enjoyable prose. I'm still not sure whether I enjoy the rhapsodies or the pans best, because each type of review is worth reading. 3) learning. Dr. Turin's understanding of perfume structure is pretty much beyond me (and I'm not sure I care all that much), but I always learn something from reading his comments. 4) discovering something new to smell. Several of the niche/independent companies mentioned in reviews in this edition were previously unknown to me, and I'm enjoying getting to know their fragrances. 5) entertaining. It's always fun to disagree with a review and snort loudly and disparage the authors' parentage, etc., while impatiently swiping the Kindle page. (Twilly gets 5 stars? PUHLEASE. It's a chemical disaster, with not only that flat chalky baby-aspirin orange note, but also the eye-stabbing lab-created jasmine thing completely overwhelming the ginger and tuberose.) The quibbles: 1) not nearly as comprehensive as I'd expected. I get it, this is all new, but there are frequently only a few fragrances reviewed from a prolific line. Samples of some lines mentioned are unobtainable by me in the U.S., even in this age of online orders. And some prominent indie/niche lines aren't reviewed at all. (I suspect, for example, that after Turin made a less-than glowing comment on his now-closed blog, Perfumes I Love, about the "natural" ingredients of Hiram Green fragrances, HG declined to have his scents included.) This kind of hit-or-miss inclusion does readers, particularly ones who'd like to use this guide as a "try this line" advisory, a minor injustice. 2) the balance of reviews written by co-authors seems off. I haven't counted, but a casual reading displays far fewer reviews written by Tania Sanchez than I'd expected, given the makeup of the earlier edition. Frankly, I miss seeing her writing and I feel that maybe the reviews are skewed toward one person's tastes rather than a mix of preferences. Which brings me to my third point. 3) personal preferences heavily influence ratings. Unavoidable, probably. All fragrance reviewers have preferences, and those tend to influence what they choose to review as well as the ratings. Even so, this volume seems far more skewed toward Turin's preferences than the earlier edition, and that in itself was fairly influenced. (For example, some really cutting reviews are reserved for scents that seem to have gotten his hopes up by referencing in their names a raw material he loves, such as iris or gardenia, and then turning out to not feature that material as prominently or as correctly as he'd hoped. I, on the other hand, could not possibly care less whether an Iris-This named perfume actually smells like iris butter or not, since I don't love that material, and I wish he'd quit having those knee-jerk reactions.) Even with the quibbles, I've enjoyed this Kindle ebook very much and will probably order the paper copy when it is released. The writing is still a delight.

They’ve done it again in their newest guide! Hilariously acerbic and unforgiving, but also glowing praise for the deserving and unforgettable. I wouldn’t want to create an awful, or even worse *BORING* perfume and have it reviewed by LT and TS: however, I’m darn glad bad perfumes exist because of the incredibly, wonderfully sardonic writing by this duo. This book is like 700-thread count sheets and fine wine to the experienced perfumista, but is also an excellent place to start for the newbie who wants to learn about why perfume is more than just what the sales rep mercilessly douses upon you at Macy’s. LT & TS reveal why the art of perfume is intertextual: rich in history and influence of different eras and genius perfumers. They also divulge secrets of what makes great perfume: those that are technically skillful, but also courageous, innovative, perhaps iconoclastic, the estranging of the familiar, and the familiarization of the strange. If you’ve been thinking about just how boring another soulless aquatic Cool Water clone at the local Sephora is, this guide is for you. If you’re not sure you care about perfume, but you like the caustic and unsparing writing of Oscar Wilde and George Eliot, this guide is still for you. (We’ll just try to make you care by osmosis anyway.)

The first guide was called "the most entertaining reference book of the last 50 years" and the new guide follows right along in its footsteps. Evocative, educational, hilarious, it's a lovely experience to have two world experts whose *writing* is so incredibly beautiful. Both Sanchez and Turin have such a lightness, ease and grace to their writing - it's just so WRITERLY. I confess, I'm no expert in perfumes. I opened the first guide eagerly only to find the perfume I wore was likened to jet fuel. I stopped wearing it, but I'm still laughing. My point is, though, that the writing is SO good that even if you have no knowledge or even interest in the world of perfumes, this book is still an utter pleasure. 5 stars.

A terrific successor to their previous guides, but this one covering mostly new fragrances, still with the same sharp, passionate prose. Their praise for perfumes ranges from faint to fulsome to downright dismissive. Engaging, amusing, and often hilarious in readably short paragraphs. Turin is master of the surprising simile and Sanchez of remembrances of temps perdu. Another milestone in literate perfume criticism, of which they are the acknowledged founders. An especially enjoyable aspect for this reviewer was reading the book in Lucida fonts on Kindle apps for Mac and for Android. (Disclosure: this reviewer is co-designer of Lucida and a researcher of legibility :-)

For better or worse, this update focuses on "niche" perfume producers and, even among the many that fly under the niche banner, most of the producers and perfumes here are quite obscure. As "niche" has been a strong trend in perfumery, I have no doubt that Turin was urged to focus his attention here. I am not sure he should have succumbed to the pressure. First, the vast majority of those with an interest in perfumery should be directed to the earlier edition. The benchmarks of perfumery, old and (reasonably) new, are reviewed there (or in Turin's "Little Book of Perfumes: The Hundred Classics,") whereas, in this edition, they are alluded to frequently but only in passing assuming the reader's preexisting knowledge. Having read the earlier edition and much else, is this a good read? The considerable majority of reviews result in mediocre to poor ratings. Hence, one is substantially left with hundreds of reviews amounting to: "Here is a perfume you likely never had an interest in and, on the merits, you shouldn't." That simply does not make for a compelling reading experience. The book is not quite like a gray Russian novel of hopeless misery where nothing happens until page 389 when someone decides to commit suicide. There are welcome nuggets, but they are few and far between. My point is not that Turin is more dour than he should be. If anything, niche perfumery even more than mainstream is prone to widespread pretense, sophistry, posturing, and even downright fraud. If you want an exhausting if not exhaustive support for that viewpoint, then feel free to slog away. Turin, for his part is commended for the even more arduous task of sampling all these fragrances.

I would recommend this review book to anyone who was like me, completely transfixed by the first guide. It’s a fascinating world that our authors occupy, I can always pick up useful info just from their conversational style of writing. There is always more to learn, about perfumery. The history is rich, the science is fascinating,and these are things our authors share throughout the book. Of course the main function is to get expert opinions on whichever fragrance has caught our attention on any given day. If we have not worn it or even smelled said fragrance it would be a ‘blind buy’. These workout sometimes but if you can get a detailed rundown of the fragrance or a warning to stay away, then the guide has served its other purpose.