Smelly

October 27, 2009 4:57 PM

I'm looking for the name of a writer who writes about perfumes in a really beautiful way.

I guess she is a perfume critic. All I can really remember about her is that writes about them in an unconventional way (describing memories, comparing them to things really unrelated to scents, etc.) and maybe for a newspaper or magazine. Anyone got an idea?

posted by bunny hugger to writing & language (15 comments total)

Are you thinking of the late Theresa Duncan?
posted by jrossi4r at 5:07 PM on October 27

Chandler Burr? Male, but when I Google for 'perfume critic,' he seems to be the first result.
posted by box at 5:07 PM on October 27

This one? Summary via Kottke.org:

Rave reviews for Perfumes: The guide

This is the second rave review I've read of Perfumes: The Guide.

Now there's a book called Perfumes: The Guide, by the husband and wife team of Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez, which is not just enlightening, but beautifully written, brilliant, often very funny, and occasionally profound. In fact, it's as vivid as any criticism I've come across in the last few years, and what's more a revelation: part history, part swoon, part plaint. All of the other reading I was supposed to do was put aside while I went through it, and it took me some time to finish, in part because I was savoring it and in part because I kept stopping to copy out passages to e-mail off to friends. In the library of books both useful and delightful, it deserves a place on the shelves somewhere between Pauline Kael's 5001 Nights at the Movies and Brillat-Savarin's incomparable Physiology of Taste.

The first review was this New Yorker article:

The joy of Turin and Sanchez's book, however, is their ability to write about smell in a way that manages to combine the science of the subject with the vocabulary of scent in witty, vivid descriptions of what these smells are like. Their work is, quite simply, ravishingly entertaining, and it passes the high test that their praise is even more compelling than their criticism.

Perfume is one of those things that I don't particularly like in real life but that I really enjoy reading about.
posted by GilloD at 5:08 PM on October 27

The Emperor of Scent has many such descriptions. It is also a mesmerizing book about perfumes and the sense of smell. It is not exactly what you are looking for, but may nevertheless be of interest.

Oh, it is by Chandler Burr, who is linked above.
posted by yoz420 at 5:13 PM on October 27

Burr is the perfume critic for the New York Times, incidentally.
posted by box at 5:15 PM on October 27

Luca Turin, who is written about in The Emperor of Scent, has his own book worth reading:

The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell
posted by kcm at 5:19 PM on October 27

Probably this one. ;) http://boisdejasmin.typepad.com/
posted by Muirwylde at 5:36 PM on October 27 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I'm guessing you're probably thinking of Luca Turin, the subject of the Chandler Burr book. (Burr began writing his own perfume crit after publishing the book. )
posted by neroli at 5:43 PM on October 27

PS: Brian Eno is a perfume amateur who has written some interesting thoughts on the the subject. (Clearly, I'm a fan.)
posted by neroli at 5:55 PM on October 27 [2 favorites]

Might as well mention Tania Sanchez, a perfume critic who cowrote a book w/Turin, and married him.
posted by box at 5:58 PM on October 27

A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman?
posted by jeanmari at 6:21 PM on October 27 [1 favorite]

Made me think of the way Christopher Brosius describes his own perfumes, although that's probably not who you're thinking of. Here's an example. (Click on "The Story".)
posted by MsMolly at 8:15 PM on October 27

So frustrated that I can't find the chapter on smell from Natural History of the Senses online. However, it is the most poetic and engaging essay on the sense of smell and the art/science of perfume that I have ever come across. A somewhat detailed book review. Here is a blogger describing the chapter's coverage of an interview with IFF perfumer, Sophia Grojsman. Another blog reviews the chapter:

Here are two memorable smells that Ackerman captures in words. “Violets smell like sugar cubes that have been dipped in lemon and velvet,” She writes this is what writers do “define one smell by another smell or another sense.” “A Peace rose smells like sugared leather dipped in honey.” I highly recommend this book not only for writers and poets but for anyone who is interested in the world of our senses.

“Smell brings to mind… a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years.”

"[Cleopatra] anointed her hands with kyphi, which contained oil of roses, crocus and violets; she scented her feet with aegyptium, a lotion of almond oil, honey, cinnamon, orange blossoms, and henna. The walls were an aviary of roses secured by nets, and her regally-perfumed presence arrived before her, like a kind of calling card in the scent-drenched wind."
posted by jeanmari at 8:19 PM on October 27

Still researching these answers trying to see if that's who I was thinking of. Pretty sure it was a woman and not Sanchez. Thanks for all of the answers, though.
@jeanmari -- I don't think this was her, but this seems like a great book. I got to read a little of it on amazon.com.
posted by bunny hugger at 7:16 AM on October 28

It was Theresa Duncan. Thx.
posted by bunny hugger at 12:10 PM on October 28