Perfume, when done well, is a message written by the perfumer to the person who’s going to be wearing it. Rose oil is a smell – and when beautiful it’s sublime.

People always think of perfume as a refined form of a smell, and that’s not true. Luca Turin: ‘Perfume for me, it’s not a smell – it’s a message in a bottle. Jo began by asking Luca why he wrote the book, and why he thinks fragrance is worth writing about or discussing, anyway… In any case, Luca is a completely down-to-earth, engaging, generous and wonderful person to spend time with – he and our editor Jo Fairley go back many years, right to before he published The Guide, while he was still developing his vibrational theory of how we smell – and everyone in that room was buzzing with enthusiasm throughout the day. We’re not quite sure if our VIP Subscribers were expecting Luca to sniff them as they walked in the door and turf them out of the room snarling with disgust if he disapproved of their choice, but our Facebook page had seen a frantic discussion of ‘what to wear!’ to the event. We were all gathered at Les Senteurs for The Perfume Society’s afternoon tea with Luca Turin – fragrance expert, scientist (though he disputes this) and co-author with his wife, Tania Sanchez, of what has become the definitive ‘Bible’ for perfume lovers the world over – Perfumes: The A-Z Guide. As the crowd of fragrance fanatics shuffled tentatively into the room, the excitement and tension were palpable.

Luca turin reviews