Reddit mentions: The best cosmetic manufacturing books

Here goes the dump:

On perfume industry:

Chandler Burr - The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York - the book that originally got me into fragrances. It is exactly what it says on the cover: an inside look at how mainstream fragrances (specifically Jardin Sur Le Nil by Hermes and Lovely by S J Parker) are developed.

Jean Claude Ellena - Diary of a Nose J-C Ellena is the head perfumer at Hermes and a part time writer (and a hero of the previous book). This book is more about his personal reminiscences and thoughts about perfumes. He also gives an interesting list of cool fragrance recipes (accords) in the appendix

Jean Claude Ellena - Perfume: The Alchemy of Scent - by the same author. This book is mostly about the industry.

Denyse Beaulieu - The Perfume Lover: A Personal History of Scent This is an autobiographic book from a woman who reeeealy loves perfumes and managed to convinced a famous perfumer Bertrand Duchafour to make a perfume for her. Sometimes reads more like an erotic novel but a good book.

Perfume guides:

Luca Turin, Tania Sanchez - Perfumes: The A-Z Guide - a famous guide, very quirky and opinionated but their perfume descriptions are great fun to read.

Luca Turin's blog Turin is a famous perfume freak and olfaction scientist, he stopped writing, but the blog posts are available for download.

Chandler Burr - articles Burr is a self-styled perfume art critic, who writes for major newspaper and magazines. His articles make a good intro for a layman.

Barbara Herman - Scent and Subversion: Decoding a Century of Provocative Perfume This is about collecting antique perfumes. Reads a like a slightly edited collection of blog posts (which I think it indeed is).

Tessa Williams - Cult Perfumes A guide to niche perfumes. I suspect most of the text was written by the brands themselves, because sometimes it has a marketing blurb feel to it. Nevertheless it gives a good overview of major players.

The H&R Books (4 Volume Set) Book of Perfume, Fragrance Guide , Feminine Notes, Fragrance Guide, Masculine Notes, Guide to Fragrance Ingredients It doesn't say all that much about each perfumes, just the notes, but what it lacks in depth it makes up in breadth.

Michael Edwards - Fragrances of The World - another huge compendium. Don't have it myself, but looks very solid.

On general olfaction:

Chandler Burr - Emperor of Scent - it's about Luca Turin and his new theory of olfaction. I get the feeling that the technicalities are over the author's head but it's a fun read. Has a lot about fragrances as well.

Luca Turin - The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell the book by the man himself. Fun popular science.

Avery Gilbert - What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life A collection of popular sketches about olfaction, from Smell-o-vision to the way they train police dogs

Gunter Ohloff, Wilhelm Pickenhagen, Philip Kraft - Scent and Chemistry - I havent read it yet, but it comes with high recommendations.

I also have a bunch of books on perfume making, but these probably should go into a separate topic

Some of the best info is held in two books:

The Art of Perfumery, by G. W. Septimus Piesse amazon link here

and

Perfumes, Cosmetics & Soaps, Volume 2, by W. A. Poucher, Vol amazon link here

The first is historical, but very helpful to explain what perfume manufacture was like in the nineteenth century, and how basic accords were made. Also, he gives some very simple and helpful ways to reproduce the scents of flowers which are hard to capture in nature by using other materials.

The second book (by Poucher) is part of a 4-book series. This volume, along with Vol 1, are the most useful. They lay out some of the very fundamental building blocks of how perfume ingredients are made, reconstructed - how to create basic accords, what the essence of accords are, how they are shifted slightly through changes in ingredients, etc. It's a perfect mix of technical information, historical background, and practical advice.

I would also second the info previous posted about consulting the demonstration formulas at GoodScents, and also the DIY forum at Basenotes. The DIY forum can be a bit advanced, but some folks will help you with basic questions - just be sure to first search through their older posts with advice for beginners (I had many questions answered here that I would have spent weeks asking for otherwise.)

If you are actually looking to start studying and making perfume, my advice to a beginner is that there will be a lot to learn ahead of you, and it's best to embrace this as a great part of the process. To this day, I am constantly asking myself questions, learning about new materials, studying new things, finding better ways to work, etc. It's an unlimited field of inquiry. If you're learning all that alongside study of perfumes out in the marketplace, both fields of study will complement each other. You'll begin to understand how fragrances are made, and when you first recognize a scent component being used in a mainstream perfume, it's a bit of a revelation!

The chemistry of making soap is just simple saponification a book like this would probably help. Scientific Soapmaking: The Chemistry of the Cold Process https://www.amazon.com/dp/1935652095/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_t6GFAbDRF0CTQ if you really want to go in depth there are engineering books on soap as well. Soap Manufacturing Technology, Second Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/1630670650/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_68GFAbVMD7SK7 this would be really in depth and probably cover modern soap and surfactant chemistry as well. My specialty is mostly Hair Color and personal care, i’ve only begun making soap recently. Beside when i was a kid and we made soap from rendered animals.

The best way to study perfumery is through the formulas of others (which is how many professional perfumers learn the trade). This is about the best introductory textbook on the subject, but this one is also excellent. You should also actually work with the materials to get an idea of what they smell like in isolation, so I would check out Perfumer's Apprentice, which sells sample/educational kits to get you started.