There's a scene in "The Diary of a Nose" in which Jean-Claude Ellena, one of France's foremost perfumers, is on an airplane next to a woman who is wearing one of his scents. The perfume, he says, is "struggling to cover the smell of cigarettes impregnating her clothes," while her husband's periodic hiccups release wafts of "undigested garlic."
But for Mr. Ellena, who is the exclusive perfumer for Hermès, going through life with an overdeveloped sense of smell generally seems to be more interesting than irritating. He often enjoys even disturbing scents. When other visitors to the French Alps flee a field of clary sage, because the flowers are emitting a "human sweat" odor, Mr. Ellena stays behind to let the smell of "bestiality" and "non-eternity" wash over him.
After reading "The Diary of a Nose" and another new olfactory memoir, Denyse Beaulieu's "The Perfume Lover," I'd like to smell a bit of clary sage too—and a whole lot more. It's hard to write about perfume without sounding like breathless advertising copy. But both writers look seriously at the creative process behind familiar scents and force you to appreciate the much-neglected sense of smell. Clearly it's a richer world when we're sniffing it—even when it doesn't smell good.
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