Perfume

The Alchemy of Scent

**Explore the world of scent with “**one of the world’s greatest perfumers” whose clients include Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Bulgari, and Hermès (The Times, London).

To women the whole world over, perfume means glamour, and in the world of perfume, Jean-Claude Ellena is a superstar. In this one-of-a-kind book, the master himself takes you into his laboratory and explains the process of creating precious fragrances, revealing the key methods and recipes involved in this mysterious alchemy.

Perfume is a cutthroat, secretive, multibillion-dollar industry, and Ellena provides an insider’s tour, guiding us from initial inspiration through the mixing of essences and synthetic elements, to the deluxe packaging and marketing in elegant boutiques worldwide, as well as the increasingly complicated safety standards applied to each bottle of perfume.

In Perfume: The Alchemy of Scent, Ellena explains how the sense of smell works and how he personally chooses and composes a perfume. He also reveals his unique way of creating a fragrance by playing with our olfactory memories in order to make a perfume seductive and desired by men and women the world over.

“Jean-Claude Ellena is an illusionist, a characteristic that has served to make him one of the world’s greatest perfumers.” —The Times (London)

“[This book] makes you want to run to the perfume counter and test your impressions against the author’s romantic rhapsodies.” —Liesel Schillinger, The New York Times