A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York
With a nod to Valentine’s Day, a review of a book about the perfume industry.
+1 to the other positive reviewers; I didn’t find the story wordy, and I can see that adding more details about the perfumes mentioned in the epilogue would only have delayed the release of this book. Burr probably has another one in him…
Sidebar: My nose has never worked very well; attributed to a bad fall when I was a child. I buy perfume by the box and marketing package and based on response, seem to be getting it right.
Therefore, The Perfect Scent is a about a world that’s alien to me. I loved Chandler’s faith-in-opinion (smells like ****). Mostly, I read this book as a documentation of the creative process, at least as expressed through a commercial product. It’s hard to find artists who can speak clearly about how they get from idea to finished product; the big decisions that get made early and the increasingly constrained and refined adjustments along the way; the contribution of deadline and budget to the final product; the changes in thinking and ability that occur across a lifetime.
Four stars not five because it didn’t change my life and the library can have their copy back. However, I did find myself buying Burr’s Emperor of Scent when it crossed my path at a local used bookstore.
