Posted by Robin
on
10 November 2011
Last week, we gave readers the chance to ask Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez questions about perfume and their new book, The Little Book of Perfumes: The Hundred Classics. Here are their answers.
Karin: Hey Luca and Tania – we miss you!!!! Would love to see an update of The Guide. Is that a possibility?
TS: Thanks for asking. We’re both burned out on the subject at the moment. Sorry!
Angela: My question is, in your opinion which perfume house has had the most heinous reformulations? (My money is on Dior.) Which house has had the most respectful reformulations?
TS: The most heinous would be Caron. Respectful—this may not be a fair question. Dior has been abominably unlucky. (See below.) I do think that Piguet’s reconstructions of Fracas, Baghari and Futur were perfect examples of how one can do legacy perfumery with integrity. (Of course, Cravache and Visa were perfect examples of how not to.)
Robin: Angie, I have a side question that relates to yours — in their review of Diorella (2011 update) they say “No one can blame Dior’s head perfumer, Francois Demachy, for allergen regulations that have made citrus, jasmine, and oakmoss tricky to use’, but it seems to me that you’re spot on, Dior has done the worst job of any house. Just figures that they had all the iconic Edmond Roudnitska fragrances. I’d like to know if there is something about those fragrances in particular that makes them harder to update than, say, the fragrances in Chanel’s back catalog.
TS: That’s just it…
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Posted by Robin
on
3 November 2011
The Little Book of Perfumes: The Hundred Classics by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez is officially on sale now — if you pre-ordered, you probably already have your copy.
If you don’t know what it is, you can find the book announcement here. I’m not going to review it (nor is anyone else around here, since we haven’t got a book reviewer at the moment), but I’ll tell you a few things I noticed right away:
The snark is gone, largely because they’re only talking about fragrances they think are good. If you liked the snark, that will be a minus, but for those who were put off by the tone, this is the volume you want.
Many of you were wondering if you needed The Little Book if you already owned one of the original two versions (Perfumes: The Guide or Perfumes: The A-Z Guide). That is, of course, up to you, but there is new material, albeit not a ton of it…
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Posted by Robin
on
18 October 2011
The Little Book of Perfumes: The Hundred Classics by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez is now available for pre-order at the major online bookstores (delivery around 10/27)…
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Posted by Robin
on
15 February 2011
Mainstream researchers have long attributed our sense of smell to a "lock and key" hypothesis. The idea is that every odor molecule that enters our nose has a specific shape that fits a specific receptor—like a key fits a lock—allowing us to detect, say, the acrid aroma of burnt coffee. But the hypothesis leaves some questions unanswered. For one, it doesn't explain, why we can detect tens of thousands of odors with only a few hundred smell receptors. It also doesn't explain why odor molecules with very similar shapes give us such different smells; the molecules that gives us the smell of vodka and rotten eggs are almost identical, for example.
Enter vibrations. Chemists have long known that atoms in a molecule vibrate at a particular frequency, depending on their overall molecular structure. Even molecules that differ by a single atom can vibrate quite differently. In the new study, neurobiologists Maribel Franco and Efthimios Skoulakis at the Alexander Fleming institute in Athens and biophysicist Luca Turin and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tested whether these vibrations could account for our wide range of smell.
— From Do Vibrating Molecules Give Us Our Sense of Smell? at Science magazine. You can also find articles at New Scientist and Nature. Thanks to Tania and everyone else who passed along one or more of the links!
Posted by Robin
on
4 July 2010
But the best things are completely new: the strange, stately harmonies of smell are now explored by a generation of “nazers,” a movement started in Paris around 2020 that soon took over the world. You are all familiar with their work, no need to go into it. I knew they were onto something when I smelled a piece by Calice Becker’s granddaughter that went from bread to nail varnish to curry in the opening bar. I am smelling her second album as I write.
— Luca Turin's final article at NZZ Folio, Notes from the nose -- The Last Duftnote.
