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I've been fascinated with the sense of smell since I can remember, precisely for how powerfully it ties to memories. Visual art is a way to decorate space, music decorates time, and perfume decorates both space and time, which is another reason why it's so evocative, neuronal pathways aside.

In this book, Jean-Claude Ellena talks the reader through his creative process, far beyond knowing your materials and their chemical compositions, the dilution percentages and their interactions, he speaks about creating a scene, something that evokes the sense of a place, perhaps a personal memory, or simply an imagined space. He emphasizes the artistic process of creating a perfume, which is, like any other art, an extremely arduous process of learning the basics, improving your technique, and finally freeing yourself from convention to experiment and create on your own.

Later on, he also focuses on the perfume industry, the marketing aspect of it, how it's regulated for safety standards and the fight for granting perfumes protection under intellectual property. Absolutely fascinating.