Synopsis Extraordinaire

I have been immensely fortunate to have Mr. John Biebel review Hidden Scents on the Fragrantica website. Check it out here

Fragrantica is a unique site that hosts an encyclopedia of fragrance, in addition to being an international online magazine for perfume reviews and news in the world of fragrance.

John Biebel is an artist and writer and perfume aficionado. He has a visual arts background like myself, but more importantly, he has penetrated deeper into this book than anyone besides my editor, and has come back with a synopsis that is most articulate.

If you're thinking about reading the book, but you aren't sure what it's about or whether it's up your alley, read this review.

Not to mention, his writing on such a potentially confusing subject is so smooth it's practically machine-readable(!)

Hella Fumes

New Jersey is home to many of the world’s perfume makers. Eric Schlosser, in his Fast Food Nation 2001, calls it the Flavor and Fragrance Corridor (referring to the strip of I-95/NJTP that runs through the middle of the state and upon which are located many buildings critical to the global flavor and fragrance industries.)

It’s no wonder that someone would come up with the bright idea to steal a buttload of perfume from one of these places. $30,000 worth, right in the trunk of his car.

So that’s what a trunk’s worth of perfume costs. But wait, let’s consider this – the ingredients themselves cost about 100 times less, which is 300 bucks. Which one is crazier: that you can get a year’s salary by filling a uhaul with stolen perfume, or that fragrance designer (under the guise of a brand name of course) can turn one dollar of oil into a one hundred dollar bottle of oil?

Then again, Salvatore Dali was known for saying that all artists are alchemists because they turn paint into gold. Those fake Vermeers sure went for tens of thousands of dollars, and well, they weren’t even “real” paintings.

Notes:

Man charged with stealing large amount of perfume from work

May 2016, NJ.com

What Exit – The Smells of the New Jersey Turnpike

2015, osmias.com

On Hindsight and Blindness

2012, networkaddress.blogspot.com

(about the Vermeer forgeries)