New York Times hires man with nose for a story
The New York Times has announced the appointment of its first perfume critic, in what the paper describes as a breakthrough for olfactory journalism and a wake-up call for a secretive, hype-driven industry.
There are a couple of websites devoted to fragrance and a scent columnist at a Swiss newspaper but, as far as the New York Times is aware, Chandler Burr, a journalist and author, will be the first full- time perfume critic for an English-language newspaper.
"Perfume is an art form just like other art forms from theatre to painting to music, so we're excited to be the first to cover perfume in this way," Diane McNulty, a Times spokesperson, said.
Burr's column, Scent Strip, in the paper's style section, will assess old and new perfumes for men and women as well as the occasional scented candle, and rate them from zero stars to four stars. Some company executives are not going to be happy. In his first column on Sunday he says he will describe one fragrance as smelling like "fresh insecticide", although he says he gives another from the same company a three-star rating. He argues that the industry as a whole will benefit because the column will enliven public interest.
"All false humility aside, I and The New York Times hope it will do that. We would not be doing this if we didn't intend for the column to become the reference point for perfume around the world," Burr said on Thursday. "The industry is extremely nervous about this, but they shouldn't be."
Burr worked in the perfumery of a family friend to earn cash for the holidays when he was growing up in Washington, but trained as an economist and worked as a science writer before going back into the world of perfume.
In 1998 he was waiting for a delayed Eurostar at the Gare du Nord in Paris when he got talking to another man on the platform, who turned out to be one of the world's greatest experts on the science of smell. Luca Turin, then a biophysics lecturer at the University of London, was pursuing a controversial theory of how scent is recognised by the human nose. Burr went on to write a book about him, The Emperor of Scent: A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses, and entered the uncharted waters of perfume criticism.
Burr said he would focus on the perfumers working behind the scenes for big-name companies, just as restaurant critics follow chefs, and promised to dig beneath the advertised ingredients and look at the chemical make-up of perfumes.