"Perfumes"

[fiefoe]

Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez are our enthusiastic, sharp-tongued guides in the realm of great smells.

• Perfumes seem to come in various weights and sizes, to... wear different clothes, to worship different deities. . Above all, some are better than others.
• As with the tawdriest pop melody, there is a base pleasure in perfume, in just about any perfume, even the cheapest and the most starved of ideas.
• Rene Laruelle has put it succinctly: synthetics are the bones of fragrance, naturals the flesh.
• Novel molecules still under exclusive use by the firm that made them first are called captives.
• At eighteen (Perkin) had discovered how to make the first synthetic fabric dye, mauvein, which made him rich and famous.
• Helional, which smells like a sucked silver spoon, is even more deathly pale and has a silvery sheen.
• A chemist called Baur was exploring derivatives of TNT when he discovered one (Baur Musk) that was no good as an explosive but smelled great.
• Musks have an effect on perfumes far byond their actual rather quiet smell, something akin to the transparent varnish on a paiting that gives all colors depth and saturation.
• Roughly speaking, every carbon atom you add to a molecule doubles its residence time on the skin or a strip.
• there are a very few fragrances, mostly older ones, that save the best for later, a few hours in, when they drop their earthly raiment to reveal angelic finery; my first bottle Mitsouko did that, and the sudden increase in intensity and beauty was so unexpected that for a creepy moment I thought someone invisible must have entered the room.
• Citrus is more difficult: too simple and it smells like stove top cleaner, too complex and the concision is lost.
• Good chypres are as complex as a fragarance can be without losing the plot.