Summer reading: It was either this or The Emperor of Scent, and since I’m a little weary of Luca Turin and Burr’s sycophantic worship of him, I went with this. Why am I reviewing it nearly two decades after publication? Don’t ask. I get to things when I can. With my schedule, I’m lucky to get to them at all.
First, a quick personal note on Mr. Burr. He followed this blog from 2012 to 2015. During that time, I’d published some carefully crafted pieces refuting his thesis on perfume as an art form. I disagreed with him loudly, even posted a photo of him (captioned “this guy”), and suddenly I was on his radar. Burr is famously litigious, and I suspect he followed me not out of interest, but to see if I’d give him a reason to sue. That didn’t pan out. My interest in him evaporated around the same time The New York Times’s did, and he unfollowed. In 2025, I doubt he remembers I exist.
Still, it left a bad taste. The idea that some elitist doofus making six figures in Manhattan doing fuck knows what thinks he can rattle me by appearing in my subscriber list is laughable. It didn’t intimidate me. I still think he’s an elitist doofus. And in my opinion, the Times is better off without him. I don’t know Burr personally, but he reads like someone who believes his own hype, and I find it strange that people like him make so much noise for a short period of time, only to vanish when the public collectively shrugs.
Which brings me to The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York. Against all odds, it was a terrific read. I can’t remember the last time I tore through a book this fast. Started it last week, finished it today, epilogue pending.
So, what is this book? It’s a dual narrative set in 2005–2006. One track follows Jean-Claude Ellena’s entry into his new role as in-house perfumer for Hermès, culminating in his creation of Un Jardin sur le Nil (A Garden on the Nile). The other follows Sarah Jessica Parker’s involvement in launching her first celebuscent, Lovely. Oddly, the book made me want to smell Lovely, so I bought it, but just as oddly didn’t do the same for Un Jardin sur le Nil. Of the two arcs, Parker’s is more compelling, though less developed. Burr gives far more oxygen to Ellena.
On the Ellena side: the prose is smooth but laced with French dialogue and its translations, clearly meant to signal worldliness. There’s no reason to pepper an American English book with French unless you're trying to show off. It’s annoying. That said, Ellena’s story is unintentionally funny. Three Hermès execs basically drag him to Egypt to stand by the Nile and magically become inspired to make a perfume that had already been named A Garden on the Nile. You can’t make this stuff up.
Does it work? Read the book. I’ll just say Ellena’s story aligns with his style: introverted, minimalist, and paradoxically dull. Watercolor perfumery is only as interesting as the materials used, and Ellena refuses to use more than 30. The result is often thin. Even Turin only gives Un Jardin sur le Nil three stars and skirts criticism, probably to avoid litigation (kidding, sort of). Is Ellena overrated? Maybe. But he also made Terre d’Hermès, which I consider one of the greats.
The SJP storyline had more promise. It shows the full industry pipeline, from a celebrity knocking on every corporate door, getting rejected across the board, then finally landing a meeting at Coty. I was surprised by how snobby the industry was. Parker was at peak fame, Sex and the City was huge, and everyone agreed she was incredibly nice. Burr confirms this but also paints her as a bit naïve, which made the read interesting. His day spent with her, meant to “pick her brain” (but really to boost his cultural cachet), was some of his best writing. No pointless French. Just clean, vivid narrative. Her creative process for Lovely was worth the page time.
Burr also breaks down the economics of the industry well. I appreciated the section on “The List” of top sellers -- it clarified a lot. He explains how fragrance houses like IFF and Givaudan actually function. He covers margins, supply chains, in-house vs. freelance perfumers. There were a few moments where I actually said, “Finally. That makes sense.” If you’re in the perfume world and have questions, this book answers many of them.
Now, the real criticism: Burr contradicts himself, just like his idol Turin. These guys love to moan about how perfumers are unappreciated artists slaving away in obscurity, and then, on the next page, they trash the very work these “artists” produce. Turin does it constantly in The Guide, panning most of Pierre Bourdon’s work while making a handful of exceptions. Cool Water and Kouros are brilliant, but Joop! Homme is “floor cleaner”? EROLFA is “thoroughly nasty”? Burr is even worse. Every mainstream masculine pre-1995 is either gasoline or Raid. He ridicules dihydromyrcenol like it's the olfactory equivalent of wearing sweatpants to work. He trashes the entire Hugo Boss line, including Number One, which is still one of the best fresh masculines around.
The common denominator? Price. If it costs under $0.50 per milliliter, it’s garbage. If it’s over $2 per milliliter, it’s a masterpiece. That’s not criticism, that’s classism disguised as connoisseurship. Burr loves to praise perfumers as underappreciated geniuses, then drags their work if it isn’t expensive or niche. Pick a lane.
His descriptions of molecules are bizarre. Everything smells like someone’s ass, armpit, or crotch. It all reads like a monologue from a sex comedy. “Nutty breath.” “Ammonia-like penis.” It’s gross, gratuitous, and not helpful. I’m pretty open-minded, but this was just off-putting. Burr might be the last person I’d ask to describe how something smells.
He also has a weird vendetta against lavender. He calls it cliché and says perfumers should stop using it. This is simply idiotic. Lavender has been foundational to perfumery for centuries, especially in masculines. Lavender is cliché? Tell that to Antonio Gardoni.
And more to the point: Burr unintentionally undermines his own thesis that perfumery is an art form. He shows, in vivid detail, how artless the process actually is. Ellena is flown to Egypt to cruise the Nile for inspiration and ends up settling on a mango accord. Mango trees are native in over 90 countries. You don’t need to visit Egypt for mango. It is only associated with the Nile in Ellena's scent because Hermès printed “A Garden on the Nile” on the label. If this is art, then Paris Hilton for Men is Egyptian modernism. I'd argue Hilton has the better mango scent, but I'll have to smell the Hermès first. Turin left Paris Hilton for Men out of The Guide, even after reluctantly giving Un Jardin sur le Nil three stars. Burr side-eyes Hilton’s perfumes in his book, without mentioning her signature masculine. Funny how that works.
The SJP storyline is even more damning to the “perfume is art” claim. Real artists don’t need corporate meetings, market research, or celebrity handlers to decide what to make. Burr never really engages with the perfumers who actually created Lovely. He spends more time on the meetings than the making. The story just peters out. I finished that section not even knowing what Parker thought of the finished scent. That’s a problem.
And finally, the epilogue-to-the-epilogue. Burr wraps things up with a check-in on Ellena and SJP’s perfume career. Then we get a bloated “thank you” section where he thanks everyone short of the Dalai Lama. It reads like an Oscar speech. Unnecessary. You don’t end a nonfiction book with a victory lap. One page, tops. Keep it tight.