Sublime

I like pleasures when they are shared, that is my definition of luxury.

we went some months later to see Lucien Ferrero again, this time at his office outside Grasse. I’d never been to Grasse; all I knew was that it had been the center of the perfume industry in France since the early nineteenth century.

He tells me how, when he started out in cartoons, he loaded his pictures with detail, but as he grows older he is more and more inclined to use a clear line, which implies a perfectly distilled drawing, luminous, sharply distinguished colors and a spare linear narrative.

“People have no idea,” he said. “They think the price is high because of the expensive packaging, and of course that has something to do with it. But think of the ingredients we use.” I did, and I’m ashamed to say that pipi de chat came to mind rather than attar of roses. “Essence of iris, for example, is now a hundred and ten thousand francs a kil