Women searching out summer-reading material will want to sniff out Chandler Burr’s The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York (Henry Holt, 2008). In it, the New York Times’s perfume critic illuminates the invisible facets of the multibillion-dollar fragrance industry, and compares the conception and execution of two perfumes, Un Jardin sur le Nil by Hermès and Sex in the City star Sarah Jessica Parker’s Lovely by Coty.

Those and other fragrances are made memorable by Burr’s lyrical descriptions. Here are a few of them, and where to find them in Vancouver after the book sends you running to the perfume counter with inspiration.

Un Jardin sur le Nil by Hermes
($145 for 100 millilitres of eau de toilette, at Holt Renfrew and Hermès)
The scent of Un Jardin sur le Nil is the smell of luxury and waterfront views. It was based on the concept of green mangoes along the Nile and the ephemeral fragrance of the freshly picked fruit. “It is the smell sunlight makes coming out of a blue sky, the air scented with the tang made as the light warms the smooth unblemished peel…”

Lovely by Sarah Jessica Parker
($86 for 100 millilitres of eau de parfum, at department stores and drugstore counters)
Amid the onslaught of celebrity fragrances, Lovely is a paradigm of how to do mass-market perfume well. Although readily available, it smells high-end, expensive. Among Lovely’s triumphs is that it doesn’t initially register as perfume. “It reveals the scent of the skin…the scent of a clean, warm, very human body…” Lovely, indeed.

Chanel No. 5 by Chanel
($193 for 15 millilitres of perfume, at the Bay and Chanel)
The cultural and financial impact of Chanel No. 5 is so ferocious that it is “referred to by some in the industry as le monstre”, writes Burr. Redolent of grandeur and opulence, the 87-year-old fragrance has an iconic status that has had everyone from Catherine Deneuve to Coco herself as its public face. Aldehydes, synthetic molecules which impart a powdery dimension, are what fuel this heady classic and bestow “its volume and glittering abstract brilliance”.

Rush by Gucci
($95 for 75 millilitres of eau de toilette, at the Bay and Gucci)
Described as an “ingenious piece of abstract art…the smell of the most excellent rayon”, Rush possesses an unmistakable synthetic quality. But that isn’t necessarily a fault. Blending gardenia with patchouli and setting it with something akin to hairspray, Rush crystallizes the scent of primping for a night of glamorous misbehaviour.