The Emperor's New Blog

November 5, 2005 11:16 AM

Luca Turin on perfume and other things. The Emperor of Scent and CTO of Flexitral reviews perfumes and waxes philosophical in his blog. Also available online: Parfums: le guide (PDF, French).
posted by greatgefilte (6 comments total)

No question, he's a lot of fun. Le Guide is out of print, pretty much unavailable in the second hand markets, and unlikely to be translated any time soon. For those with no French, his blog makes up their disability. (He is a good case for learning French, if one were needed.)

Oh- Good post.

For the scientifically minded, some links on his vibrational theory and those who dispute it. Anyone in the field have a useful update for those of us who went the liberal arts route?
posted by IndigoJones at 2:50 PM on November 5, 2005

Le Maroc is a superb, seamlessly constructed confection of jasmine, rose and cedarwood with a touch of patchouli at the bottom that only employs unusual top-notch materials. It does not jump out at you up top and feels comfortable, rich and transparent all the way without the usual cloying drydown typical of the genre.

Well, it's Saturday night, I'm drunk, and that just leaves me speechless.
posted by Frasermoo at 4:14 PM on November 5, 2005

This is a great resource for me, thanks!
posted by dejah420 at 8:02 PM on November 5, 2005

My olfactoric sense is as coarse as a 4-bit, 16 color VGA screen while this guy operates with a full set of 32-bits, 4 billion colors. So he writes about a reality I can not perceive. But since he writes really well it's still an interesting read.
Now at last I can find a parfum for my fastidious girlfriend.
posted by jouke at 12:41 AM on November 6, 2005

i'd wager that this guy is either absolutely enthralling or completely insufferable in person
posted by LimePi at 10:07 PM on November 7, 2005 [1 favorite]

Years ago, in ID magazine, I read a review of a perfume - forget which one - which claimed the scent had 'an aura of breakbeats'. Similarly, I once saw a wine described as tasting 'like a hologram of myself eating raspberries at the end of Wigan Pier.' (I can't help but think of those wonderfully preposterous lines whenever I read a perfume review.)

Anyway, an engrossing site, though it'd be nice if he had a search form somewhere so I could see what he thinks of my favourites.

And I'm going to have to dig out my copy of Perfume by Patrick Susskind after this...
posted by jack_mo at 5:49 PM on November 10, 2005