Cathy Newman’s Perfume is a coffee table book, complete with lots of glossy photographs by Robb Kendrick. It is also a wonderful introduction to the world of fragrance development and marketing. Up until a few years ago, I never gave a minute’s thought to how perfumes were created. I probably suspected that Calvin Klein didn’t throw on a lab coat and mix up the formula for Eternity himself, but if you had told me that “noses” at a few companies produced the majority of the world’s fragrances, I would have been quite surprised.
In Perfume, Newman takes us behind the scenes as she undertakes the process of commissioning a new perfume. She starts by creating a brief, or description of what kind of scent she wants, then issues it to several perfumers at Firmenich…