perfumesilove

Luca Turin's perfume reviews @perfumes_ilove perfumesIlove@gmail.com

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Bat (Zoologist Perfumes) ****

Zoologist is a small Canadian niche company, and their fragrances are named after animals: Bat, Beaver, Hummingbird, Panda and Rhinoceros. Bat was composed by neuroscientist-perfumer Ellen Covey who grows orchids, composes fragrances and does really interesting basic science research on processing of auditory signals in the bat brain. Incidentally, the proportion of science nerds in perfumery is (to me) encouragingly high: niche perfumery was, after all, started in the mid-seventies by Jean François Laporte, […]

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Perfumer mugshots

Is it possible not to look ridiculous while holding a smelling strip to one’s nose? I reckon only the great Michel Roudnitska succeeds: a faraway explorer look, lots of strips, and a cool holder that looks made of Inca gold. I want one. Update: Aveda perfumer Guy Vincent tells me “the strip holder [..] is not ancient Incan but it’s a cool thing nonetheless,  it’s the shape of a Ravenala madagascariensis palm. I have one here […]

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Blocki

I received some samples from a fragrance company I had not heard of until they recently emailed me, called Blocki. They are a revival of a firm founded in 1865 by John Blocki, and their perfumes are composed by American perfumer and synaesthete Kevin Verspoor, known to me from an interview of rare erudition and intelligence he gave a couple of years ago to çafleurebon. The three fragrances, named after quotes from letters of […]

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A package came

Yesterday a big box came from France, and I expected a ton of fragrance samples. Opened it eagerly, and instead found these socks I had ordered as antidepressants while reminiscing about Pitralon. They look even brighter in real life, and are completely opaque. Now, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, I am finding it harder and harder to live up to my red and purple socks.

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Pitralon Classic

My spirits always sink when someone picks me up at an airport or a railway station and the car turns out not to be a 1934 Voisin Aérodyne. Worse still, when the driver clears room for me at the front by throwing things into the back. To tell the truth, I’m not fond of other people’s cars even when they’re swank and spotless. I remember visiting the parents of a girlfriend many […]

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Miyako (Auphorie) *****

Legend has it that when the young Belgian composer Guillaume Lekeu finally heard the first chord of Tristan and Isolde at the Paris premiere of Wagner’s opera, he promptly fainted and had to be carried out on a stretcher, thereby missing the rest. Only a robust constitution saved me from doing the same when I first smelled Miyako. Or to be exact, while assessing a 3ml sample labeled with only a […]

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The Different Company ?

The Different Company is dear to my heart. Their first batch of releases in 2000-2001 included such masterpieces as Rose Poivrée and Osmanthus, both by Jean Claude Elléna. Osmanthus, in its small and seemingly unbreakable travel bottle, kept me company on many trips. I used to spray it in the air when taking possession of a hotel room to feel right at home. I was transported back a decade when […]

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Incendo (La Curie) ****

I recently had a chance to ask Bertrand Duchaufour about his and Mark Buxton’s role in inventing the new style of perfumery typified by Timbuktu and CdG 2 Man . What was interesting to me was that they both worked in the same oil firm, Créations Aromatiques, when this happened, and seemingly hit upon the same ideas at the same time. I had earlier asked Buxton whether they collaborated, and […]

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A tale of two soaps

We just moved into a new house and found two stashes of soaps in a cardboard box that contained the random collection of things typical of carefully planned moves: unbreakable objects individually wrapped, no doubt to give coat hangers and bathroom mats an experience of cosseted travel rare in their austere lives. Now the bathrooms contain one each of Irish Spring and Mitsouko. The former was bought in bulk for me by TS’s mother when I expressed […]

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An audience with Sultan

While at Esxence I visited the stand of Turkish firm Nishane. There was a small crowd around the stand, talking animatedly and smelling the collection. I handed over my card, bagged some samples, and heard someone nearby call my name. It was a young man I did not know, who seemed very shy and nervous. He spoke fast, did not tell me his name, said he was glad to meet me, […]

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