Book of the day - The Diary of a Nose

 

    A year ago, many of us watched and enjoyed the BBC Four series Perfume, the second episode of which looked at three perfumers to find out how they go about their highly specialised work which is as much alchemy as chemistry. One of those featured was Jean-Claude Ellena, 'nose' at Hermès, and we saw him in his studio in the woods and creating a fragrance inspired by a secret garden.

    Now M. Ellena has written a book, The Diary of a Nose: A Year in the Life of a Parfumeur (translated by Adriana Hunter) to be published next week, and I'm delighted to have a copy from which to learn more about this fascinating subject, the end products of which are so powerfully evocative.

    " 'Smell is a word, perfume is literature.'

 ... Believing that creating a scent is like creating a work of art, and describing himself as a writer using 'olfactory colours', Jean-Claude Ellena explains how all of the five senses come into play when creating a perfume... He also reveals how inspiration can come from a market stall, a landscape, or even the movement of calligraphy, and concludes this charming, perceptive diary with recipes for natural fragrances, each made up of three synthetic ingredients, to create the illusion of smells like freesia, orange blossom, grapefruit, pear...

    This is the story behind the creation of scent, the quest to capture what is most elusive."

    I can't wait to read it.

Comments

[Deborah]

Thanks for the heads (nose?) up, Cornflower. Ellena has created some exquisite perfumes, especially for Hermes. I'm a fan of his L'Eau d'Hiver (Frederic Malle boutique) too, in all its white strangeness. This is a must-read for me!

[Cornflower]

I was thinking of you as I was reading the blurb, Deborah! So far I've only just dipped into it, but the diary entries are very varied and fascinating - there's a lot to make the reader think.

[Dark Puss]

By curious coincidence on my flight back from Boston last night I was reading a short article in The Baffler Vol 19 where the perfumer Yosh Han was asked to create a scent for readers of that polemical magazine. I thought it had some quotable parts; here's one:

Bergamot

I find the intellectual tends to not be so perfume-y. They don't really like floral frgrances, and they don't like anything too dense, but they also don't like anything too happy. There's a sense of pragmatism, a sense of challenge.

[Cornflower]

Thankyou, DP, from what I've read of the book so far, it too has many quotable parts.