Now Turin wears just Caldey Island Lavender, made by Cistercian monks in South Wales, 'simply the best lavender soliflore on earth' (Manufactum sell it for £9 - and it is delectable).

I went last week to the tiny shop they have in the Fulham Road to check it out and found that, so superbly French is it, it closes for lunch every day. ) Turin tells us he himself wore New York, an 'orange amber' from Parfums de Nicolaï, for a decade - and he's a huge admirer of this small house altogether: 'Patricia de Nicolaï, owner and perfumer, is one of the unsung greats of the fragrance world, and her superb creations survive in spite of inept marketing. In an appendix, they list the 10 best feminines, 10 best masculines, the best feminines for men and masculines for women, the best florals, chypres and orientals, the best quiet fragrances and the best loud fragrances (trying out Dior's Poison is 'like road-testing an Abrams M1 tank in the rush-hour - people just seem to get out of your way. Creed's Love in White: 'If this were a shampoo offered with your first shower after sleeping rough for two months in Nouakchott, you'd opt to keep the lice.' (The house of Creed fares badly altogether.) Dolce & Gabbana's Light Blue pour Homme: 'Probably the worst masculine in production today, a combination of, it seems, only two armour -piercing notes that happen to be the most unpleasant in perfumery, marine and woody amber: plague and cholera at once.' Cartier's Pasha: 'I'll bet it's big in Brunei.' But the enthusiasms are just as wild. You find it in such great works as David Thomson's Biographical Dictionary of Cinema (so much better in the earlier editions) or Jane Grigson's books on Fish, Vegetables and Fruit. ' There we have the true note of exasperated expertise, expressed alternately in passionate enthusiasm and contemptuous dismissal. It is graceless, rough and brittle it is very late into leaf and early to shed without noticeable change of colour it fails to flower more often than it succeeds. 'In no other circumstances is there any use for this tree. He says of Robinia pseudoacacia, widely planted around London, that it's a good foil to grimy Portland limestone and nothing else. On trees, for example, you can't beat Alan Mitchell's guides for swingeing opinion. In every field, there's one of these - Hugh Johnson on wine, say, Hans Keller on Mozart and Haydn. Whatever the subject, they all have a common tone - not just delivering the facts but ordering and ranking them with a vengeance. Uper-opinionated, highly informed reference-books I treasure. New West End Company BRANDPOST | PAID CONTENT.

Luca turin top 10 perfumes