Perfumes The Guide 2018, by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez, promises over 1200 new perfume reviews: "Ten years later they bring their inimitably passionate, erudite perspective back to the hugely changed world of fragrance, to sort out which of over 1,200 new individual perfumes deserves celebration (and which condemnation)." Available at Amazon in Kindle ($9.20) or Paperback ($16.99).
Yessss!!!!
Perfect summer (and autum, and winter, and spring) reading!
🙂
Yayyy, guide thread! I loved it – I could read their writing endlessly – although I was a little disappointed that so many of the brands are hard to access, since one of my favorite parts of the first one was comparing my own impressions with theirs.
Favorite reviews, anyone? Mine is Daisy Blush 2016. I debated typing it out here but would that be a spoiler?
Oh do give us a couple sentences!
“This fragrance feels like the perfumer was first put in a straitjacket, then wrapped in padlocked chains, then put in a locked trunk, and the trunk flooded. Her last muffled words as she drowned were ‘Diorissimo! Diorissimo!’ “
LOL!! Most excellent, thanks Regina.
This is wonderful 🙂 I might have to seek it out!
Hmm..
No thank you
For some reason this made me thing of the Bruno Banani advertising “not for everybody” 🙂
Thanks LTSG…I was beginning to think that I am the only one who isn’t all that interested in obtaining this 🙂
Ha!
Joining you. Not interested at all.
We are the minority on NST
It can feel so alienating to not love something everyone loves. My other big online community is a film one and everyone loves John Wick to death and I feel like I must be from another planet.
Hey, but I know that feeling well! I can’t tell you how many brands that are hugely popular here but that I am mystified by…Amouage, Tom Ford, I could go on and on.
I think that feeling hits all of us at a certain point.
But to me its not a bad thing. If we all love the same stuff and agree on everything, live would be incredibly boring right? 🙂
Also a member of the”Take a Pass” club.
I finally got the Kindle edition right before the paperback came out. Wish I’d waited ???? It’s a fun read, but I liked the 1st edition more, partly because there were more classics/mainstream.
I am surprised that they went back on their “committment” to only review indie/small distribution perfumes they liked so as not to hurt the smaller lines by trashing them (Quartana seemed to have a target on its back).
Oh yes, I’d forgotten about that. Hmmm. Their negative reviews can be so delightfully funny, but that was a kind idea.
I did not know about the commitment, but have to say I don’t think of Quartana as indie in any way.
But will add that the industry has changed so much, and there are so many smaller lines working *inside* the industry (with perfumers from the big fragrance houses, in other words — I’m not talking about the true indie brands, which are rare), and charging outrageous prices for what is pretty mainstream / pedestrian stuff — stuff that could have easily been put out by some mid-tier designer in a mid-tier department store — that I think they ought to have a target on their back. The only difference between some of these fancy brands and, say, Michael Kors, is in packaging, pricing and PR. There was a day when I also thought smaller brands ought to be treated with some degree of kindness, but that’s long gone. It’s pretty clear now that greed is everywhere. I feel more kindness, frankly, towards the crap sold at a reasonable price than the crap sold for more than most families have for last week’s food budget.
Just my 2 cents! I will get off my soap box now!
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I hear your point. Yes, Quartana used big firm perfumers for that line. It isn’t indie but it’s a small distribution concept project (I think Twisted Lily and now Perfumarie are the only 2 shops that carried them). Definitely nowhere near mid tier dept store. Much too weird for that and wouldn’t have mainstream appeal. Though Smellbent also got trashed, mostly, which made me kind of sad, even though I personally haven’t wanted to own any I’ve smelled.
His defunct blog “perfumes I love” was based on his attempt to only promote the standout stuff and not harm smaller brands who don’t have a wide audience other than the perfumista community. Not all were indie. I thought that might carry over to the book, but see it didn’t.
Robin- I cannot thank you enough for saying that!!!! My sentiments exactly!!!!!!
THIS truly resonated with me-
“I feel more kindness, frankly, towards the crap sold at a reasonable price than the crap sold for more than most families have for last week’s food budget.”
I am that family!!!
and yes GREED is INDEED everywhere!!!!
Precisely!
Robin, that was scathing! I LOVED IT!!
Except the crap sold at reasonable prices are probably reasonable in part because a mass number of line workers aren’t making a wage they can live on. So, yes, I do not deny greed on any level!
The cynic in me says those same underpaid workers are making those three hundred dollar bottles!
YEP. Michael Kors Midnight Shimmer in the morning, By Kilian Moonlight in Heaven in the afternoon. It’s all the same.
And the profit margins are about the same for the people at the top. HUGE. Most people buying $300 bottles of perfume would be utterly shocked to know the cost of the juice itself.
oh yes! The cost of the entire package (bottle box and juice) is probably under ten dollars.
And as I responded to Gaynor below 40 years ago there were some incredibly perfumes that could be bought for a song in a drugstore that far outshines some of the high end expensive niche.
I think I’ll just stick with my first edition.
Alas they don’t just go after the pseudo-indie but also some true one person shows, who I won’t name at the risk of injuring them further. I know those offerings aren’t for everyone – and also get that LT really really didn’t like the perfumes – but some of these are tiny tiny businesses and it seemed a little much. Worse I find the guides boring. Sorry. The occasional laugh isn’t enough for me. Some of the longer reviews of things LT likes are useful and informative, hence my reading at all.
Oops! I named names ????
I gotta say that if Quartana is in any way in trouble, I don’t hardly think you can attribute that to this book. They’ve had fragrances out since 2016. I have hardly seen them mentioned, here or elsewhere. I tried all of them, and have hardly mentioned them myself.
They are charging over $100 for 50 ml. They are industry insiders. They are using the major fragrance houses to make their juice — that requires a serious investment, so they’re not scrappy DIYers. They have won a Fragrance Foundation award. I just don’t see why they should need or deserve “protection” from a perfume critic.
I am with you about them to be honest. It’s a couple of other tiny producers for whom I feel badly. But it’s a business I guess.
When Anthony Lane trashes a movie in the New Yorker, I guess I feel bad for all the people that put their heart into making that movie, but it doesn’t make me think Anthony Lane has no business telling what he sees as truth, even if it’s a small indie movie. Ditto with my favorite food critics. When Ruth Reichl slammed a small restaurant into oblivion, nobody said oh, why is she saying such things, these were nice people and their restaurant was so small.
You may or may not enjoy the writing style in The Guide, but it’s odd to me that after all these years perfumistas still seem to struggle with whether or not it is a good thing or a bad thing for Turin/Sanchez to be writing what they see as truth.
Furthermore, unlike w/ movies or restaurants, perfume houses had a choice (or at least, I assume they did): if they don’t want to hear an honest opinion, don’t send a sample.
(Amy, I realized after writing this that it isn’t even directed at you, it’s really just a general statement. So sorry if it seemed like I was arguing with you! And I am *really* going to get off my soapbox now. )
I agree with everything you’ve said, Amy. I also think that the audience for reviews is the ‘reader’ rather than the ‘creator’…although no one pays as much attention to a review as the creator of the work . Having said that a very poor review can also be very helpful, informative and thoughtful. If it’s simply point scoring or self-indulgent, or ‘entertaining’ it’s not much good to anyone, and it is boring. I did feel sorry for one of the Australian brands in the book.
I for one am enjoying unusually-soapboxy Robin! And I want to go read Ruth Reichl now…
Regina, she was not snarky! She was honest, though, and she knew her stuff. She’s a wonderful writer, though, and besides her reviews, lots of great food writing: highly recommend Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me With Apples.
On the subject of snark, read this years ago and it stuck in my head, because I guiltily prefer Anthony Lane to the New Yorker’s other critic, David Denby, but it’s also an interesting discussion of snark, ending with “Public life, particularly public life in the arts, is not for the sensitive or timid.”:
http://jewcy.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/epic_fail_david_denbys_snark
But would you really feel happy with one sentence of snark as a review from Anthony Lane or Ruth Reich? I write reviews all the time in my work and of course sometimes bad ones, but I hope that they have substance, show some basic respect, and can tell the reader what has, in my view, gone wrong.
But as I wrote, I don’t hate the guide and certainly not bad reviews in general, I just found a lot unhelpful.
And respect is hard to gauge and subjective, so I hesitate with that word. No reason to respect a bad perfumer as a perfumer. So that’s not what I mean. Or even really what I initially said about bad reviews of tiny businesses. It’s all about tone I guess.
Tone is really important. You don’t need to respect a bad perfumer as a perfumer but if you have undertaken to write/publish a review/ book you need to show that you actually care about what you are saying and respect your subject and your audience.
No, but if one of them were writing a guide, as opposed to a newspaper reviews, I assume they’d have to worry about length. And with Lane, certainly, you’d end up with a fair amount of concentrated snark. (Reichl was not snarky.)
But my point was not about whether LT & TS should be as biting or snarky as they are. That is a matter of taste and some people will enjoy it and some won’t. My point was more about whether or not you should be “kinder” or “more respectful” or less truthful about some brands than others.
I might have felt that way 10 years ago when the industry was quite different. It makes less sense to me now.
But in general, I agree, I find short reviews less helpful than longer ones, and I read them more for entertainment than edification.
Well I never said that they should be kinder or less truthful about one brand over another. I did imply, and in fact it is true, that the implications for a one person business are quite different than for, say, Chanel, but again my comment was that the reviews were unhelpful and uninformative. Of course people can disagree but let’s try to be clear about what I wrote.
Or rather some of the reviews, mostly the short negative ones.
Amy, I’m so sorry if I misrepresented what you said…I wasn’t meaning to claim you said those things, only that it seems to be a general feeling here, that they should be kinder to smaller brands. As I said above, I wasn’t really even responding to you as much as getting on my own soapbox because I find all of this interesting. And then of course I say I’ll stop and I don’t! Now I really will.
No worries I get it! Just wanted to be clear what I meant!
True. No one’s a victim in the end. It’s all supply and demand and conscious consumer choices for things that, in the end, are completely nonessential.
There’s so much division out there right now, that maybe I’m just in a weird space of hyper perspective-where tarring and feathering some blip of a brand in the perfume galaxy, which seemed harmless in the past, now seems pointless and maybe not how I want to be entertained right now. Sorry for the nihilism, lol. But thanks for the civilized, stimulating discussion!
Ha! As I say below to robin, they weren’t one I was worried about!
No, I mentioned Smellbent by name.
The ‘review’s’ often veered off into ‘opinions’. You can take a one star perfume and write something about it that is informative ( how it failed to measure up or deliver) that adds to a level of knowledge, understanding of perfume in general, or that individual scent. Or you can be lazy and sloppy and say something like ‘ bath water that all four family members have used, and then the dog’ and that really says more about the writer than the perfume. Some of the one star reviews have a literary equivalent in the ‘I hated the characters therefore the novel sucked’ trend. I don’t really care about the star rating, that’s beside the point for me, but I want the same care, or at least intelligence re. Poor perfumes as good ones. Instead of slamming a perfumer with four 1 star reviews, all one liners, why not do one review properly. That would be far more interesting. The guide felt very tired and flat, like it was being written for cash rather than passion.
I suppose it’s fair game to slam the slammers (although I wholeheartedly disagree about the intelligence of the writing, which in my opinion is the best critical writing I’ve ever seen). As someone who used to work in publishing, I do want to contest your last point because I suspect this is very much a project of passion, not a cash grab. Earning lots of money off book writing is a rare exception; most people barely make minimum wage when you consider how many hours go into manuscript preparation.
I think I should have said that a lot of it felt like it was a chore to write. I also got the impression he felt offended by some of the perfumes. I liked the first guide as it was witty and fresh but I didn’t get that impression from this guide. Cash grab is too strong a term for what I meant…I understand that writing doesn’t make you rich….what I meant was that sometimes you do projects as a commision ( for $) and other times you do them because you really want to ( regardless of $) . I say that as someone who has published 13 books
Slam the slammers? Really? The difference between the tone of this discussion and the guide seems pretty obvious to me. (I know we are a lot less amusing!)
We are as one on this. I like that LT and TS can’t be seen as potentially trying to make some cash, which by the way I don’t begrudge them in the slightest for a job decently done, but tiny one person perfume companies are lumped in with the greed of Estée Lauder and co. But I will move on from this topic now!
I wrote a long blog post on the book, and I have another one coming (mostly about TS’s comment on the “decline” of celebuscents, but here I’ll say that after reading the extensive excerpts on Amazon’s free preview, I had no interest in reading it. I couldn’t even get through the free reviews! The introductory chapters were good, though I didn’t agree with everything, obviously (I do think it’s worthwhile to hear what they have to say, regardless). However, my main issues with the reviews are: 1. Some I don’t think of as reviews at all. 2. I seem to different preferences than they do (and some aroma chemicals really bother me). 3. I don’t care if a fragrance isn’t “artistic” because I try to largely avoid top notes, which is where, apparently, such people find the “art” (is there such a thing as a unique drydown at this point, especially in the age of IFRA?), 4. I think at least LT admitted that he just sprays some of the scents he reviews on a card and if he doesn’t like his initial impression, he doesn’t go further, and hence he would have no idea if it had a pleasant drydown (which again, is what I want to know!), and 5. I think of fragrances in terms of compositional types.
For example, there are a whole bunch that are similar to Cool Water for Men. I don’t care which one is the most “artistic,” but rather which one has the most pleasant (to me) drydown. Nevertheless, it would be very helpful to someone like myself if a “top expert” would point out similar fragrances. Today, for instance, there are a bunch that are similar to Tom Ford’s Tuscan Leather, including a “super cheapo” I really like, Oud Touch by Franck Olivier. Now if you get a bunch of free samples (or even bottles), as I’m sure LT and TS do, then perhaps the hobby is very different for you, but to me, with the price of niche samples what they are (and how many I’d have to sample, and then pay retail if I wanted a bottle of a few), it doesn’t make sense financially. Instead, I’d prefer to blind buy bottles of super cheapos that I think I might enjoy, and so far that has worked out very well. By contrast, I have gotten a bunch of niche samples in swaps over the years, but I still haven’t tried many of them. What’s the point? I enjoy what I’ve got, Iv’e got plenty of bottles already, and I don’t see any reason to be tempted to buy expensive bottles (though I do try the samples of the ones I think I’d like, and yet I can’t remember one time that leading to the purchase of the bottle!).
So, for those who enjoy the humor or who actually can use the reviews to decide upon buying samples or bottles, I think it’s well worth buying, but I just don’t find myself interested in reading their reviews.
I’ve been enjoying the book, but it can be a bit of a guilty pleasure, as some of the reviews are very unkind, and also entertaining. Maybe that says something about me, I always enjoy bad movie reviews more than good ones 🙂
I agree with Robin’s comment – if people are asking hundreds for a small bottle of perfume, it’s not unreasonable for buyers to expect something special. Of course, we all have a different idea of what is special…
Forty years ago there were enough gorgeous/special perfumes available that were not three hundred dollars a bottle…beauties could be found even within a drugstore at a reasonable price.
If only I had been more interested or clairvoyant, I could have bought more of those beauties when I was 15 or 20 or 25…
And the bottles wouldn’t be at their best now anyway…
That’s right. Which is why I haven’t actively pursued getting my hands on vintage. Even if stored properly the top notes would probably be off and the fragrance would not smell as I remembered it to smell when I wore it years ago in its “fresh” state.
Personally, I think there is enough decent stuff out there to enjoy without me falling down the vintage rabbit hole. I just wish the prices would be more reasonable the way it was years ago. As wonderful as the internet has been for connecting all of us perfumistas I also feel that it has created a huge demand and fear of missing out and the perfume companies are cashing in on our “obsession” because they know we will pay. I never had to buy a sample when I was growing up…..they were handed out freely because the assumption was that after you sampled and liked it you would buy a full bottle. Now with samples being sold for 3-5 dollars for 1ml it equates to 300-500 dollars for 100ml. When I think about this it really blows my mind even though I myself have bought said samples.
OK- rant over 🙂
For the record we _never_ stop at the topnotes when reviewing a perfume.
If you could get Apoteke Tepe back up and running that would be fabulous!
I already bought the Kindle version so purchasing this would be redundant. I found the bits I’ve read to be partly amusing, partly boring, but overall, a good book to have on hand when I have snatches of time to be coonected to a hobby I enjoy while enjoying my own perfume selection for the day.
For the smaller houses whose perfume(s) got bad review(s), I would like to suggest only publishing a bad review if the House has another perfume with a significantly more favorable review. By doing so, it may soften the blow slightly and allow the reader to not dismiss the house altogether.
That is an excellent suggestion.
I bought the kindle edition a few weeks ago. Like its predecessor, its not an a-z page turner 😉 but browse and read randomly about 10 – 20 perfumes a week and I am enjoying it so far.
I read both guides for the writing, laughs and the insights into a weird industry. And not because I want to try a new perfume or need guidance buying one. I already have NST (and other blogs) for that 😉
I was in a fugue state yesterday and missed the fun. An engaging discussion here, and I agree with many points. For one thing, I miss Ruth Reichl’s voice and must read more of her books.
I will read Perfumes The Guide 2018 for the writing and the insights, as Jiji said, into a weird industry. The first Guide granted my newly awakened nose a large and sweeping picture of an inconstant perfumed milieu. At the same time the individual reviews spurred me on to smell things I would have never known otherwise. I am grateful for those experiences.
I’ll approach the new edition in the same way: hoping to find a portrait of the recent perfumed landscape, resisting the urge to be caught up in a fever dream of sampling individual perfumes.
And likes Bigsly, I love to look for a cheap thrill. In the past I’ve shared that I adore Chanel Eau de Cologne. It IS the perfect cologne. Were a large bottle to land in my lap, I would wear it with joy each day. Yet I can not bring myself to pay Chanel’s price when 4711 Eau de Cologne brings me the same extraordinary pleasure.
I’ve worn both colognes often, even at the same time to test my nose. It ended in a draw. As with so many things in life, perfumed and otherwise, à chacun son goût.