I’ve had this book since I visited the Aftel family museum in Berkeley in late 2022. I finally read it after launching my own first fragrance. Overall the book is fitting for all levels of experience in perfumery - there are stories, instructions, ideas, and analyses that are sure to provide something new to anyone. I felt the instructional part was super helpful, it gave me ways to freshen up my own perfume making process, new materials and supplies to try, at the same time it matched a lot of the best practices I learned at a (very expensive) summer perfume course at Grasse Institute of Parfumery - so I really recommend it as an accessible, cost effective, and trusty option for anyone interested in creating perfume.

This book was extremely helpful to learn how to make your own perfume. I loved this book. :)

Relaciona perfume y alquimia de una manera super interesante, con ideas sacadas de la filosofia y la metafísica.
Tambien repasa el origen de casa ingrediente. De dónde se extrae y incluso una pequeña anecdota personal, histórica o mitológica.
Y por ultimo te da guías sobre cómo hacer tus propios perfumes (liquidos o solidos). Donde y qué tienes que comprar exactamente.

La autora es un amor, te habla todo el rato de sus ingredientes favoritos y de su propia experiencia personal y me parece súper tierna

My long absence from the book reviewing community, both on here and on YouTube, can be blamed in large part to my burgeoning interest in perfume, which started about two years ago and has only become more serious. (Well, there’s work, too, but I figured I’d blame-shift to something that sounds mildly interesting.) The author, Mandy Aftel, is one of the great purveyors of independent perfumery in the United States. She currently operates a highly successful company called Aftelier Perfumes (a play on the word “atelier”) that sells perfumes and other scent-related products.

When you ask around in Facebook fragrance-related groups for other people who make their own scents, as I plan to start doing quite soon, this is always the first book that everyone recommends. People simply rave about it. If there’s anywhere you want to start, they say, it’s with “Essence & Alchemy.” So, in full preparation for learning as much as I could before I began ordering essential oils, concretes, and other ingredients used in perfumery, I hurriedly ordered the book from Amazon.

However, I was pretty disappointed by what this book had to offer. It’s not wholly useless for the complete neophyte, which I totally am: there’s good information about what kinds of notes mix best with others, and what kinds of oils serve as “top notes” (ones that you smell first), heart notes (ones that you smell for most of the duration of the scent), and base notes (the scent as it begins to finally die away on your skin). I had a lot of questions. Can sandalwood be a heart note? Is there anything I can do to extend the life of citrus notes? What kind of rose is better, Egyptian or Bulgarian? This was really valuable information, and I’m glad I found some answers at a reasonable price. (You’d be amazed at how expensive some of the technical books on perfumery can be.)

However, much of the book concerns, rather unfortunately, the “alchemy” of the title. I suppose that might have been a hint that it would have been a little, how shall I put it – new agey and kooky? – for my tastes. Much of the first half of the book – the part that focuses on the “alchemy” of fragrance – is interlarded with block quotes, like the following one from French philosophy Henri Bergson: “These memories [olfactory sensations], messengers from the unconscious, remind us what we are dragging behind us unawares. But, even though we may have no distinct idea of it, we feel vaguely that our past remains present to us … Doubtless we think with only a small part of our past, but it with our entire past, the original bent of our soul, that we desire, will, and act. Our past, then, as a whole, is made manifest to us in its impulse; it is felt in the form of tendency, although a small part of it is known in the form of idea.” Other similar quotes from people like Carl Jung abound.

Don’t get me wrong. I love reading Jung, and even Bergson. Look at the history of what I’ve reviewed: it’s full of obscure philosophy that only the unrepentant nerd would even deign to touch. What I enjoy reading less is how a perfumer who seems to be perhaps a bit too in love with her own craft, mixes in texts on alchemy and philosophy so create a sort of salmagundi of voodoo that is only occasionally graced with the useful information other people promise it has.

For someone genuinely interested in taking their first steps into creating their own fragrances, only chapters 3-6 are necessary. There’s also a very helpful index at the back that gives a list of the most important oils that Aftel says are indispensable and every perfume should have, along with a curated list of online shops where you can purchase said materials. If you’re interested, there’s also a short chapter about mixing bath salts (no, not the fun kind that make you eat people’s faces off). All in all, not a total loss, but I was sad not to have found more useful information here.

Bravely onward to Steffen Arctander’s “Perfume and Flavor Materials of Natural Origin”!

This is a very magical book. If you ever read "Against Nature" and felt real strange during the perfumes part, definitely read this.

Reading this book was a direct result of my new obsession with the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, a boutique perfume oil company that I just ADORE. There's lots of practical information, a big helping of encouragement to experiment, and lots of good mythological and historical tidbits.

Fascinating book about the mechanisms of perfume, but with a little woo-woo at the end.

been sniffin like crazy ,, made my first scent - patchouli, rosewood, bergamot, orange bitters - as a gift for mon Cheri !! meditative informative read

Beautiful writing style and great information for a perfumer just starting out. Towards the end she lost me a bit because it started going a bit off topic. Great read, very helpful!

I picked this up at an airport bookshop ... I believe it was on our way back from Europe that one time when we went. An interesting look at the history and making of perfumes. It actually inspired me for a few months to try making my own.

my journey with fragrances has been an interesting one, indeed. without going into my whole story, i used to not like them, then i got mildly interested around the time i met my wife. a few months ago, i became extremely interested, and now i'm part of a whole fragrance community on Youtube (just look up FragranceBros). i thought it would be an interesting video to do a review of a fragrance book, and also another good idea to do a vid on a brief history of fragrance. i saw this book, grabbed it for my Kindle for cheap, and was blown away by all that i read.

there is absolutely a wealth of history with fragrance.

in a way, this book is deceptive in that it says that it covers a history of fragrance---and it does--but it is so much more than that. the author, Mandy Aftel is also a perfumier, and it seems like she trained herself in the art. but besides just giving a history lesson, she talks about her journey through fragrance, gives her tips and suggestions about how to smell and what to look for, and if that wasnt good enough, she even EXPLAINS HOW TO MAKE FRAGRANCES! this is incredible! she goes in depth about all the major fragrance notes and tells you what you need and which essences to get when making fragrances. it's just an invaluable guide. and i think that's the best term for this book: a guide. i'll come back to this book as a reference in the future.

the biggest downside to this book is that she breaks up the history throughout the book. i really wished that she kept the history in a few chapters and everything else somewhere else. i can see why she DIDNT do this, however, because she would have had people saying this was two books in one, one useful and the other not useful (depending on your perspective of each). the other downside is that she really goes in depth about alchemy--which is cool as a medium of history-telling, but to repeatedly come back to it throughout the book is tiring. and i also understand why goes off on metaphorical tangents, but, again, it's tiring. when i saw her start to get metaphorical, i just started skimming.

all in all, a wonderful gem of a book. well worth it if you have an iota of interest in fragrance and history.

A rambling, philosophical treatise that delves into the makings and workings of perfume. As the title implies, Mandy Aftel draws many parallels between the perfume-making process and alchemy, both in the functional details as well as the more abstract notions of the pursuit of perfection/enlightenment/eternity. The text is pretty evenly split between technical details and explanations of scents and how to combine them, and sudden delvings into such topics as religion, love and sexuality, society, and economy - and their relationships to scents and perfumes.

Aftel has some clear preferences about what makes good perfumes (definitely pushing natural essences over synthetics by touting the former's complexities and vitality as virtues compared to the latter's straightforward but boring, 'dead' nature).

That said, it was enjoyable to read, even if it's easy for the uninitiated to feel lost in the written descriptions of perfumes (what does a 'round, voluptuous scent' mean?). This was far from discouraging, though; the book piqued my interest in looking essential oils and aromatherapy (and has a good Further Readings section by subject!), as well as just paying more attention to the role our sense of smell plays in our life.