I have compiled various works on smell, fragrance, and perfumery for anyone seeking more in-depth information on the matter. The following are links to titles themselves or podcast episodes from the New Books Network wherein a host interviews the author of a new book whose topic relates to fragrance or scent.

Books

Internet Archive

This search pulls up works freely available on the Internet Archive with the subject "Perfume". To read many of the listed books, you need to have an account on the Internet Archive to check them out from the digital library. It is free to register! I would highly recommend making an account since it'll allow you access to so much free multimedia.

• Perfume: Joy, Obsession, Scandal, Sin: A Cultural History of Fragrance from 1750 to the Present by Richard Howard Stamelman
• The Artifice of Beauty: A History and Practical Guide to Perfumes and Cosmetics by Sally Pointer
• The Scent Trail: How One Woman's Quest for the Perfect Perfume Took Her Around the World by Celia Lyttelton

Other Sources

• The Perfume Lover: A Personal History of Scent by Denyse Beaulieu
• Fragrance and Wellbeing: Plant Aromatics and Their Influence on the Psyche by Jennifer Peace Rhind
• The Case Against Fragrance by Kate Grenville
• Scent: A Natural History of Fragrance by Elise Vernon Pearlstine
• Sacred Luxuries: Fragrance, Aromatherapy, and Cosmetics in Ancient Egypt by Lise Manniche
• Perfumery: The Psychology and Biology of Fragrance by D. M. Stoddart, Steve Van Toller, George H. Dodd
• An Ethnography of Fragrance: The Perfumery Arts of ʿAdan/Laḥj by Dinah Jung

Academic Works

• Fundamentals of Fragrance Chemistry by Charles S. Sell
  • Great overview of fragrance as an industry
• Perspectives in Flavor and Fragrance Research by Philip Kraft and Karl A. D. Swift
  • Some neat-sounding chapters include
    • "New Woody and Ambery Notes from Cedarwood and Turpentine Oil"
    • "Pyrazines and Pyridines from Black Pepper Oil (Piper nigrum L.) and Haitian Vetiver Oil"
    • "New Alicyclic Musks: The Fourth Generation of Musk Odorants"
• Common Fragrance And Flavor Materials: Preparation, Properties And Uses by Johannes Panten and Horst Surburg
  • This work speaks on sourcing and processing of various compounds used in fragrance
• Science and Technology of Aroma, Flavor, and Fragrance in Rice by Srivastav, Prem Prakash, and Deepak Kumar Verma
  • For anyone who enjoys a good rice note. Here's a quote from the preface:

Aroma is one of the diagnostic aspects of rice quality that can determine acceptance or rejection of rice before it is tested. It is also considered as an important property of rice that indicates its preferable high quality and price in the market. An assessment of all known data reveals that more than 450 chemical compounds have been documented in various aromatic and non-aromatic rice cultivars. The primary goals were to identify the compounds responsible for the characteristics and rice aroma. Many attempts were made to search for key compounds for rice aroma, but no single compound or group of compounds could be reported that are fully responsible for rice aroma.

Multimedia Materials

Here are some results from the George Mason University Open Educational Resource Metafinder on perfume and fragrance, which will bring up multimedia on the searched topic, including photos of antique bottles, vintage ads, articles, and more. The metafinder searches from various archives, including the Digital Public Library of America, the Library of Congress (of the U.S.), and JSTOR, for materials mentioning the search term(s) in their metadata (e.g., titles, content, or tags).

Podcast (on Books)

I have found that the New Books Network podcast has a great range of episodes related to sense of smell, fragrance, spices, and other scented items, going beyond the human species' experiences of this sense. As far as the format, the episode host simply interviews the author of a new book on its subject matter.

Below are the episodes I found just by searching the network's site for "fragrance" and "perfume". The types of books below range from monographs to biographies to literature. The pages linked below include a description of the book's subject, information on the author and host, and an embedded audio player with the episode so you can listen from the web page.

Science

• The Secret Perfume of Birds: Uncovering the Science of Avian Scent by Danielle J. Whittaker, hosted by Galina Limorenko
• Smellosophy: What the Nose Tells the Mind by Ann-Sophie Barwich, hosted by Joseph Fridman
• Sensory Experiments: Psychophysics, Race, and the Aesthetics of Feeling by Erica Fretwell, hosted by Chad Valasek

Biographies (of celebrities who had fragrance lines)

• Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography by Meryle Secrest, hosted by Oline Eaton
• On Elizabeth Taylor: An Opinionated Guide by Matthew Kennedy, hosted by Daniel Moran

History

• The Scent of Empire: Chanel No. 5 and Red Moscow by Karl Schlögel, hosted by Jana Byars
• Vanilla: A Global History by Rosa Abreu-Runkel, hosted by Amir Sayadabdi
• Scent: A Natural History of Fragrance by Elise Vernon Pearlstine, hosted by Miranda Melcher
• Scents of China: A Modern History of Smell by Xuelei Huang, hosted by Miranda Melcher
• The Scent of Ancient Magic by Britta K. Ager, hosted by Miranda Melcher
• Victims of Fashion: Animal Commodities in Victorian Britain by Helen Louise Cowie, hosted by Miranda Melcher
• Histories of Health and Materiality in the Indian Ocean World: Medicine, Material Culture and Trade, 1600-2000 by Anne Gerritsen and Burton Cleetus, hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
• Fragrant Frontier: Global Spice Entanglements from the Sino-Vietnamese Uplands by Annuska Derks, Jean-François Rousseau, and Sarah Turner, hosted by Julia Heinle

Literature

• Bombay Hangovers by Rochelle Potkar, hosted by Sharonee Dasgupta
• Wissen um Stimmung: Diskurs und Poetik in Robert Musils Die Verwirrungen des Zoglings Torless und Vereinigungen by Sergej Rickenbacher, hosted by Julia Stetter

anyone else a data nerd about their fragrances?

i'd love to hear what details you keep track of and how!

for me, some of the most useful data are:
- source (e.g., online platform or person's name)
- estimated fill level at time of acquisition (i often get partial bottles)
- cost/mL
- bottle's full volume
- size (sample, mini, travel, full)
- dispenser (atomizer, splash, dabber vial, applicator wand)
- date decanted
- date gifted or returned to someone
- date emptied

@fragrance

(M43)I've got quite a nice little collection of fall/winter scents because I really love leathers and tobacco.(M43)I've never really done a deep dive into freshies and springtime fragrances but last year I bought a couple of samples of Etat Libre D'orange You or someone like you and enjoyed it immensely. I also bought a full bottle of Fat Electrician, which has been my go-to fragrance this fall and winter so when I started thinking about buying a new full bottle for spring, You or someone like you was the obvious choice for me. So I just ordered it today. It should arrive in a couple of days. I'm at least as excited about getting this one as I was about Fat Electrician. Has anybody else ordered something recently that they're really excited about? Or have you started thinking about new scents for spring yet? I would also love to hear your opinion on You or someone like you if you're familiar with it 🤗

I bought the body oil a few days ago and it finally arrived yesterday. I thought I was getting the perfume oil but nope. That was my mistake, not theirs. After the disappointment at myself faded, here’s what I think. First, let me say I have never smelled the original. To me, this is the original. lol. I’m not sure what notes they use, but I smell strawberry, something woody, and caramel. I know the original has strawberry, milk, forest fruits, baby powder, and caramel. I’m sure the FBO impression is probably similar. I imagine someone wearing this when they’re having a stressful day and they need to wind down and feel confy. It gives me Christmas vibes. Not sure why, but alright. I’m not sure what, if anything, I should pair with this. I don’t have anything in my collection that would match, so I think I’d wear it alone. If you need your Melanie Martinez fix and don’t wanna spend $500 on a bottle of the original fragrance on eBay, give this a shot.

This one was probably the first or second perfume I've bought for myself, when I was just getting into trying scents. I used to drive the Caron sales attendant mad! But this was love at first sight. I hate the smell or smoke, but I love tobacco notes in perfume. This is very subtle too, a bit like if you're walking in a blooming garden and someone has been smoking a few metres away. And you're wearing a cashmere coat and the sun is shining, and it's mid afternoon on a warm day in October.

This is one of my all time favourite perfumes. I fell in love with it's weirdness the moment I tried my tiny sample, which I wore everyday, until it was gone...

Someone on basenotes described it as a 'beautiful garden full of flowers, with a body buried in it...' (I paraphrase massively, but that's the general gist)

Fabulous!

Someone at work was either wearing this or a dupe, so I felt the urge to dig it out when I got home...

It always activates my salivary glands when I spray it on, it's so fruity and delicious

Catching up from yesterday! Initio describes this as: Magnetic, bestial, deeply erotic...All the power of natural Amber Grey in a molecule with pheromone effects. When the science excels, it becomes an art…

Unfortunately, this doesn’t do much for me. IT comes on sharp and chemically and quickly drifts away into a very faint animal musk. I could smell it for about 2 hours; and it wasn't something that I really enjoyed.

Magnetic blend was much more potent on my husband. The opening had a little pop of citrus but was still a bit harsh, and dried down into a strong civet musk, waning into an animal-amber. He said he the heart lasted a solid 6 hours. However, “it’s not my favorite,” was his verdict.

You don’t have to be rich to have a great fragrance wardrobe. You just have to learn what you like, and then budget accordingly.

There are a lot of places online that will sell decants (small samples from a larger bottle) for a small fee. This is a good way to try things that you don’t have normal exposure to without doing a ‘blind buy’ on a full size bottle. Google for decants or scent splits and have a field day!

Scentsplit, Luckyscent, Fragrancesplit, Decantx, Microperfumes and others sell samples. Many will give a coupon for x% off a full bottle purchase thereafter.

Some fragrance houses also sell sample packs of their scents or will make travel size packs for a little more, such as MFK, Killian, Zoologist, Mancerra, etc.

If you live in a large metropolitan area, you may be able to take advantage of a good size retail establishment and try on samples there for nothing but a conversation with a friendly sales agent.

Have fun out there!

Well, well, well. This morning, I doused myself with Creed Santal. Before I left for work, I asked my husband what he though of it, and he took a hearty sniff. “Hmmmm, seems okay, it’s really mild,” he said. And, he was right. Santal is a very mild woody fragrance on me. Barely a whisper of an opening, and weak but steady amber woods through the life of it.

Early this evening, I did a refresh spritz, and also gave my husband a quick spray. Mine smelled the same – very bland and mediocre amber. On him, however, the scent absolutely comes alive. The top notes of ginger, juniper and rosemary are prominent. I’m pretty jealous, to be honest. Because it then opened to a luscious heart of cinnamon and sandalwood…wow! It’s just taper down a bit now into more of a musky, cedar, tonka combination with a hint of that cinnamon left in the background. Very nice.

While the fragrance didn’t work out for me – it smells great on my husband.

Good luck out there – keep it smelling fresh!

A seriously good vanilla....

Quelques Fleurs L’Original is a classic floral (described by Houbigant as green-floral-woody). This is a full floral from start to finish for me. It has been going strong for over 12 hours – I am still enveloped in a little flower cloud. Quelques Fleurs opens up with a pop of fresh lemony white florals – it’s a very strong opening. It’s brightness slowly fades into a warm bouquet of tuberose, jasmine, lily of the valley ad carnation. There’s a hint of clove that underpins the heart and continues into the base. Ultimately, this dries down ito a still rather potent base of sandalwood, civet, tonka bean and I still pick up that clove. I’m sure there are other notes in there – but I’m not able to single them out. For all-day wear, you can’t beat the staying power of Quelques Fleurs.

I did a random blind buy on this one. It was $223 for 100ml on sale for $69 at the time. I was intrigued by the brand and the description of the frgarnace, so I decided to take the gamble. Shantung EDP marketing says • Mood: unpredictable and optimistic • Notes: mandarin, blackcurrant, rose, cashmere wood

I’m going t be honest, here. The initial spritz is entirely reminiscent of bug spray…like Off! or some serious DEET spray. After about 15-20 minutes, that demon burst dies down a bit, but still carries a really synthetic tone. I can’t discern any of the notes discussed in the marketing; and I’m not sure if that’s my nose, body chemistry, or…??? Well, after about an hour, the harshness really broke down, but there wasn’t much there in the end. I’d call the drydown a faint skin musk at best. It didn’t work for me, but if you are into really strong chemical bugspray, this could be for you.

On a side note, I like the little structured, paisley fabric-wrapped box that this came it - it was a very nice touch.

'A Feline Vanilla with Iris and Safran fur. Neither girly nor food, Felanilla is an adult vanilla. Precious, generous, racy, Felanilla is a Nectar expressed by three absolutes in majesty in an oriental composition, gently spiced, brightened with a fruity wood under a red amber fire' from PG

Mmmmm, a non sweet vanilla, Iris, a bit of hay....I think there's some saffron in there too (I have no idea of how that smells, so I can't say for sure)

Lovely stuff!

.....And not a hint of sugary, cakey sweetness

This and Vanille from Mona di Orio made me fall in love with real vanilla

This mini is a bit battered, but the scent is still gorgeous as ever. I estimate it is probably the formulation from the 80s. I always thought of it as a very realistic lily of the valley, but this year I actually compared it with the real flowers, and it they're way sweeter. I do prefer the old formula, the more recent ones feel more diluted and watery, and don't project as much

L’interdit is described as white flowers with a “dark accord” which I’m thinking Givenchy is referring to as seductive. L'Interdit Eau de Parfum was developed in the 1950s for Audrey Hepburn, who wore it exclusively for a year before it was released in 1957 (a great year for Chevy, also). Givenchy and Hepburn had a tight relationship – they basically dressed her and she became the first actress to ever be “the face” of a perfume. Pretty cool.

This is a sweet, feminine, flowery fragrance, with a sexy little undertone. To be entirely honest, the fragrance notes do not change over time when I wear it. All day, I can smell the same components, but after many hours, they will wane. I get the orange blossom, sweet jasmine and patchouli. I’m sure there are other components in there. It is quite sweet smelling, but in a more flowery rather than fruity tone.

Interdit means forbidden in Francais. I can see where that fits in the mid 1950’s and still fits in as a fragrance classic today. I’ve been glad to have this in my repertoire for many years (this may not be my first or second bottle) – it’s a sweet, sexy feminine floral.

From Fragrantica- 'Amber and woody notes are united with a note of smoke which reminds of autumn and winter. This composition encompasses Guaiac wood, cedar, sandalwood, birch resin, oak moss absolute, castoreum, vetiver and ambergris. The nose behind the perfume is Laurie Erickson'

This stuff is the BOMB! Probably one of my absolute favourites in my collection. It's perfect in winter, and just as good in summer, not heavy or overwhelming, just a superb fragrance...

Kicking off the morning with Acqua di Parma’s Mandolo di Sicilia from the Blu Mediterraneo series. The shower gel is a candy bomb – it reminds me of the center of a 1977 Russell Stover chocolate covered cherry. I’ll admit that I actually love the smell of candy; but this may be waaaaay too sweet for a lot of people. This was largely marketed as a male fragrance, but I think it smells like candy and has much more of a unisex/feminine lean. Anyway, let’s get past the shower gel and talk about the cologne.

The cologne begins with a sweet and fruity smell; and I am really picking up a cherry/fig scent, rather than the anise and orange top note described in AdP marketing. The heart is very sugary, sweet and almondy - it reminds me of a great amaretti cookie (and now I can pick up a hint of anise)…and this all dries down into a warm, woody vanilla musk. Overall, this is a really sweet fragrance with limited projection and a few good hours of personal space scent. I’m going out later tonight and will definitely need another dosage!

Oooooooooooooooooohm. The Scent of Peace. Described by Bond No9 as: Grapefruit, Black Currant, Lily of the Valley, Hedione, Cedarwood, and Musk. I thought to myself..wtf is hedione??? Methyl dihydrojasmonate is an aroma compound that smells similar to jasmine. In racemic mixtures the odor is floral and citrus while epimerized mixtures exhibit a dense buttery-floral odor with odor recognition thresholds of 15 parts per billion. The compound is also known as hedione…per wiki. Ok, then.

Well, honestly, this really is a nice grapefruit bomb on first spritz. I love this kind of citrus burst right off the top – it’s invigorating. I also pick up that hint of black currant/blackberry in the background. After that initial pop of citrus, you’ll get a solid heart of lily-of-the-valley (or muguet, if you are fancy). The drydown is a very light white skin musk (at least on me – I get very little woodiness). I tend to refresh this one after about 6 hours, because I like to renew the freshness and strengthen the overall aura of fragrance. Perhaps I’m a bit of an oversprayer, but I don’t really care. You never know when things will come to an end - enjoy every damn minute of what life has to offer! Peace out!

Sol De Janiero Cheirosa 71 is a super sweet mist of cookie-like goodness. Yes, it may be too sweet for some people…but it sure smells nice. Reminds me of the scent of fresh-baked blondies just pulled from the oven. Salty, buttery vanilla caramel is the delicious opening, but it does fade quickly to a nutty/tonka base that still smells warm and toasty. It’s a really comforting fragrance if baked goods are your thing. There are days that I really need this in my life. Tuck one into your tote, because you’ll definitely want to reapply.

Omnia (original) was released in 2003 and this particular variety was discontinued some time ago, but can still be procured on the gray market or by resale. It was marketed as a fragrance for women and opens up with a spicy little kick, but not overwhelming. There’s Ginger and other warm but bright spices. It tones down a bit with a very earthy middle of Nutmeg, Cinnamon, Almond, and honestly…the earthiness I speak of reminds me of dirt (which I happen to really like). The base dry down is tonka bean and a lot of woody notes (along with that fading earthy dirt). I put this on at 6AM for a killer day at work; and finished up 12 hours later with it still going pretty strong. Ahhhhh. Have a great night, fragrance friends!

I bought this many years ago as a backup bottle for my husband. He has decreased his use, and I have adopted this as my own. Erolfa is a very masculine scent, opening with a wallop of green spice/citrus (lemon/lime/basil). The heart is more of a mixup that smells very piney (like rosemary) with lavender. It dries down (just a little) to a rosemary/cedar - very woodsy. It makes a pretty darn strong statement all day long. No need to reapply. I enjoy wearing this as I really like the herbal tones that it carries throughout.

Dug out this oldie of mine packed full of suedey leather and Iris, like sticking your nose into an expensive pair of shoes and huffing deeply

I originally bought this direct from the perfume house along with Ambre Russe after trying out their sampling programme....I received a hand written thank you note from the owner and nose Marc-Antoine Corticchiato, which was pretty cool

I've got a small selection of their fragrances, mostly in the 'oriental' category, Musk Tonkin is definitely worth a gander if you appreciate a really filthy musk

I love the fizzy blast that this has (aldehydes, I think?) it just keeps on fizzing away as it smoothes into sandalwood creaminess.....

One of the best from Chanel, and also one of the first proper fragrances I ever bought, good times!

Zoologist Hummingbird is a flower forward scent with hints of fruit throughout. Initial spray is total flower power with lily of the valley and lilac that drifts into a creamy floral with honeycomb, honeysuckle and mimosa. The honey heartnotes are very strong, but are countered by a powerful floral punch. The drydown starts out a little soapy and fades into warm cream/milky notes along with sandalwood.

Zoologist concept and packaging is really cool – and there are a lot of scents to choose from. They have nice sampling packages and you can also create your own set of 5 travel sprays.