Being the enormously complicated chap that I am, I’ve been deeply over-excited by the delivery of a copy of “Perfumes, The Guide” by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez. (After this review in the New Yorker). Yes, it’s a big book of perfume reviews, and yes, that sounds like something that would go from 0 to Wanky in the first ten pages, but it’s actually both awesomely written, and magnificently interesting. (And supremely bitchy when they don’t like something.)
Anyway, I’ve been reading bits aloud since it arrived, and thusly armed, we just got back from an afternoon running around Selfridges smelling things. I’ve now got a bottle of L’Artisan Parfumeur’s Timbuktu, which is utterly delicious, and which I wouldn’t ever have ever seen or tried without that book. It was a close run thing between that and Guerlin’s Après l’Ondée, which, again, well, I’d have never tried it: it’s technically meant for women, for one thing. Turin and Sanchez, though, said it was one of the twenty greatest perfumes of all time, and totally wearable by strapping big blokes like me: Hell if I know, but I do now feel like a new vista of geekiness has opened up in front of me. New blogs to read, and new wizards to follow. Hurrah.