You or Someone Like You

A book cover with two faces and one has glasses.

L.A. is covered with flowers. Gasoline pink, mint crimson, moonlight white, deuterium violet. We drive past them, tuxedo next to evening gown, two elegant Saturday evening pupae in this rushing metal-and-glass cocoon, migrating by infrared night vision toward some disease fund-raiser or cinematic party where we will metamorphose and spread our wings, seeking the heat…

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The Emperor of Scent

A book cover with a white flower on it.

Turin’s plane lands in Bombay. The next morning, he gets up early and leaves on his pilgrimage to Mohamedali Road, famous for perfume, firecracker shops, and muglai food snack joints. He is looking for the rare and expensive perfume ingredient oudh. Perfume shops are everywhere. Peer into their dim interiors, and most look like old,…

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The Perfect Scent

A book cover with the title of the book.

Jean-Claude Ellena  | Hermès At the time Hermès began courting him to become its in-house perfumer, Ellena was just completing a perfume called L’Eau d’Hiver, the third (and, given his entry into Hermès, obligatorily the last) of a trilogy of perfumes he’d made for an exquisite, in fact all-but-revolutionary niche collection, Editions de Parfums run…

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