Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez, authors of Perfumes: The Guide - our bloggers for the week of 5/5

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Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez are our guest bloggers during the week of May 5th. If you have any questions for them add a comment to any of their posts. Here is some brief information about Perfumes:The Guide:

Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez are experts in the world of scent. Turin, a renowned scientist, and Sanchez, a longtime perfume critic, have spent years sniffing the world’s most elegant and beautiful—as well as some truly terrible—perfumes. In Perfumes: The Guide, they combine their talents and experience to review more than twelve hundred fragrances, separating the divine from the good from the monumentally awful. Through witty, irreverent, and illuminating prose, the reviews in Perfumes not only provide consumers with an essential guide to shopping for fragrance, but also make for a unique reading experience.

Perfumes features introductions to women’s and men’s fragrances and an informative “frequently asked questions” section including:
• What is the difference between eau de toilette and perfume?
• How long can I keep perfume before it goes bad?
• What’s better: splash bottles or spray atomizers?
• What are perfumes made of?
• Should I change my fragrance each season?

Perfumes: The Guide is an authoritative, one-of-a-kind book that will do for fragrance what Robert Parker’s books have done for wine. Beautifully designed and elegantly illustrated, this book will be the perfect gift for collectors and anyone who’s ever had an interest in the fascinating subject of perfume.

About Luca Turin

Luca Turin was born in 1953 and educated in France, Italy, and the UK. He holds a PhD in biophysics from the University of London and was for ten years a tenured staff member of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). From 1993 to 2000 he was Lecturer in Biophysics at University College, London. Since 1996 he has worked on primary olfactory reception and the prediction of odor character. In 2001 he became chief technical officer of Flexitral, where he uses his theory of olfaction to design new fragrances and flavor molecules.

Luca Turin is probably the best qualified person in the world to co-author a perfume guide. He wrote the very first in 1992, a relatively small (270 fragrances), literary, and confidential affair in French. The second edition from 1994 is available for free download online. Although out of print and out of date, his guide has achieved cult status among perfume aficionados goes for up to $800 on eBay. He has also twice won the highest honor for perfume writing in France, the Prix Jasmin, in 2001 and 2004. Turin’s fame is partly based on a BBC documentary about his scientific work, A Code in the Nose, which still airs in reruns all over the world. It was further enhanced by the success of a book written by Chandler Burr (now the New York Times perfume critic), The Emperor of Scent (2003). Most recently, Turin’s own book, The Secret of Scent, was released to critical acclaim in the UK in May 2006 and in the US by HarperCollins in November 2006. He also writes two monthly columns of perfume criticism for high-profile magazines, one in the prestigious Folio Magazine of the Neuer Zurcher Zeitung, and the other for Hamburg-based luxury magazine, Park Avenue, published by Grüner and Jahr.

About Tania Sanchez