Clik here to view.
A review for the Oh-La-La Reading Challenge
A Scented Palace: The Secret History of Marie Antoinette’s Perfumer by Elisabeth De Feydeau is a biography of Jean-Louis Fargeon, a perfumer to Marie-Antoinette and the court of Versailles. The book recounts his early life, his success in the booming beauty industry in Paris, and his career up through and after the French Revolution.
I will say this first: If you buy this book, buy it used. Not because it’s a bad read, but because the $20+ new price seems outlandish to me, hardcover or not, for such a short book. The book is 140 pages long - at least, the hardcover edition I bought is - but only about 114 of those are the biography material, with the rest being appendixes of scents and 18th century perfumer techniques.
With that out of the way… I’ve never really thought much on perfumes - my sense of smell is usually mediocre at best - but from what I could tell, the descriptions were all very spot on and something that perfume lovers will enjoy reading. The appendix in the back will also help with this, for those of us not in the know.
The main flaw of the book is that there is really not much material presented on his actual life. Which is a shame, because what we are given about him is very interesting, but it felt like I was reading a cliffnotes version of a biography. The perfume information is fairly thorough, however. The writing was easy-to-follow and entertaining enough to keep someone reading.
This book is interesting for those wanting to know more about perfume and other beauty techniques during the last court at Versailles. Perfumed gloves, fans, favorite scents, trends, and the trials of being a perfumer of the queen of France through both her coronation and the revolution. The main focus for perfume is the favored scents and various products made for Marie-Antoinette. So if you’ve ever wanted to know which scents she liked to use when she had headaches, or what perfumes the royal family brought with them on the ill-fated flight from the Tuileries palace, this would be a good read.