Roja Dove: The Essence of Perfume

I know, you’re wondering when I’ll actually get back to writing about new perfumes I’ve sampled, but I received the Roja Dove The Essence of Perfume book in the mail yesterday (Now Smell This offers a rather extensive, and sometimes critical, review), and it’s so beautifully compiled that I wanted to share some photos from it.

Roja Dove exhibits a near single-minded passion for fragrance and its history, and while the lofty copy can sometimes border on cringe-inducing (especially when the copy veers off into effusive praise of Mr. Dove himself), it’s good to keep in mind that the Roja Dove boutique at Harrods in London is considered by many perfume fans and fanatics to be almost a holy shrine to the art and commerce of perfumery, with Roja Dove as chief worshipper.

There’s a quote in the book from Journalist Hannah Betts from Saturday Time Magazine. She writes: “Talking scent with Mr. Dove is as rich a pleasure as it is a privilege. Everyone in the world of fragrance could do with a good Roja-ing.” And if you can’t do your Roja-ing in person, then “The Essence of Perfume” will have to suffice.

The book explores perfumery from the ground up, including theories of how we smell and why we choose particular fragrances for ourselves.

There is a great deal of information on the history of perfumery and its cultural significance, including the rise of the modern perfumer and the development of the raw materials, both organic and synthetic, for use in fragrances.

Mr. Dove offers a brief explanation of the major categories of perfume, plus subcategories. All the information in the book is accompanied by lavish pictorials, so it’s no wonder that I’m hip-deep in the thing since it arrived at my doorstep.

A lesson in materials and the regions of the world from where they originate.

There’s a gratifying focus on the classics, paying homage to the works that paved the way for contemporary perfumery. Reproductions of striking advertisements litter the pages.

The section on the art of the perfume bottle was fairly eye-opening, as in: There’s really nothing new under the sun. For example, I had no idea that the bottles for Karl Lagerfeld’s new Kapsule collection are a direct and near complete rip-off of the art-deco Baccarat bottles designed for Paris perfume house Ybry in the 1920′s. The Ybry bottles can be seen in the upper right corner of the above photo.

Bad Karl. Bad bad bad.

And what book would be complete without a shameless plug by the author for his own products? Fortunately, the Roja Dove fragrances are pretty darn great — lush, exuberant productions that carry on the tradition of fragrance as an exotic accessory rather than just something to splash on in the morning to keep you smelling soapy fresh and squeaky clean all day; unfortunately, the Roja Dove fragrances are only available from the Roja Dove boutique.

I called and tried to get them to ship some to me here in the U.S., but no go. I guess they only want me as a customer if I can fly in on my own private jet . . . that might be a few years down the road. For now, though, I have his book. It smells like paper.

UPDATE:

Avery Gilbert, author of ‘What the Nose Knows‘, catches our dear Mr. Dove in a neuroanatomy flub (which seems a topic that would be exceedingly easy to flub): D’oh! ‘Professeur de Parfums’ Flunks Neuroanatomy

“The last time I checked, the limbic system is not in the cerebellum, the cerebellum is not the “emotional part” of the brain, nor is it “responsible for processing scent.” Luckily for the Professeur’s customers, fragrance consultation isn’t brain surgery.”