Perfume books make perfect presents

By Ashley Kowalewski

The holiday season is upon us, and while you’re out doing some very last-minute shopping, may we suggest a perfume book for the scent aficionado in your life? Or maybe you’re the aficionado and the books are for you—who are we to judge.

These perfume books are lovely reads no matter the season and each one tells us something different about the fragrance-making—and smelling—process.

FOR THE READER
In The Diary of a Nose: A Year in the Life of a Parfumeur, perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena recounts the year he spent creating a perfume for Hermès, under which he is the “parfumeur exclusif.” In this diary, Ellena eloquently describes the motions with which a fragrance is sometimes laboriously created, but does so in a poetic, thought-provoking way. Lovely. $39, www.hermes.com, www.chapters.indigo.ca

FOR THE FRAGRANCE GEEK
Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez know how to pluck the heartstrings of the fragrance-devoted. Perfumes: The Guide is a book of reviews of over 1,800 fragrances. More than just an account of the good, the bad and the ugly, Turin and Sanchez’s quips are informative and relatable—and entertaining. Their follow-up book, The Little Book of Perfumes: The Hundred Classics, is also essential reading for fragrance fans: more insights and more witticisms. $35 and $21 respectively, www.chapters.indigo.ca

FOR THE COFFEE-TABLE BOOK LOVER
Frédéric Malle’s On Perfume Making is a gorgeous, oversized and illustrated coffee-table book that highlights each of the fragrances within the Frederic Malle collection. Going a step further, each fragrance is described thoroughly along with information on its perfumer (from Dominique Ropion to Michel Roudnitska) and the story behind the scent, whether it be recounting moments in his childhood while describing Géranium pour Monsieur or his and perfumer Pierre Bourdon’s distaste for “scents that reeked of testosterone” when creating the spritz, French Lover. $150, www.amazon.ca