Perfume Blog

If you’re into fantastic scent — really into fantastic scent, as an increasing number of people are — then Luca Turin needs no introduction. When it comes to unravelling the olfactory mysteries, he is the man. He knows everything that needs to be known, from the science (Turin is a biophysicist, and about to take up a chair at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) to how they make something smell like it does, and why. He has even had a book, The Emperor of Scent, written about him, and has been the subject of a BBC documentary.

Most thrilling, though, he is also a brilliant writer. You or I might be hard pushed to describe even a beloved fragrance: we might say it smells “amazing”, “slightly weird”, “extraordinary” or “old-fashioned”; you may mutter about top notes of this and base notes of that (though most fragrance descriptions seem to be written, badly, by people with no nose, who make up ludicrous things — nothing smells of “diamonds”, though a bestselling fragrance I shan’t name smells, according to Turin, of “carrots and mildew”).

Beyond that, our vocabularies fail us. Which is hardly surprising — scent is, in many ways, the oddest sense: you can’t show somebody a fragrance, or make them taste it, touch it or listen to it. Despite this, our sense of smell taps into things such as memory, desire and dreams. It is supremely evocative, and our reactions to it are both minutely subjective and universal. In my case, the tiniest whiff of Fleurs de Rocaille (Caron) can send me spinning back through the decades to specific afternoons spent with my W grandmother. Calèche (Hermès) reminds me of the smell in the car when my mother dropped me off at boarding school. Kouros (YSL) instantly reminds me of my first boyfriend, whom I would never remember otherwise. Poison (Dior) saw me through university — it seems rather incredible now that people didn’t collapse, gasping for breath and begging for windows to be opened — and Fracas (Piguet) through my twenties, until pregnancy did something weird to my nose and made me loathe the scent of tuberose, which I’d previously adored. Perfume can seduce, repel, comfort, nourish or even give you a “mental hard-on”, according to Turin, who describes scent as “a chemical poem”.

It is also sublimely democratic: anybody with a few quid in their pocket can transform themselves, with a judicious squirt, from dowdy mouse to sex bomb or (more interesting) vice versa. You can smell of beach, of cake, of sun-baked herbs and sex, of flowers or of the harem; of languid odalisque or trashy dolly; of burlesque dancer or dental technician. You can smell chic, sophisticated, brainy or dim; you can smell quiet or loud, friendly or not. And, unlike make-up, which also has these quasi-magical, personality- altering properties, applying scent doesn’t require any skill.

There are 6,000 perfumes out there, however. Even if you drenched yourself in half-a-dozen random scents every time you hit a department store, you’d only ever touch the tip of an enormous iceberg. How are you supposed to sort the wheat from the chaff, the dross from the marvels? The blogosphere is heaving with genuinely independent advice, some of it better than others, but much of it lacks any sense of authority or depth of knowledge — and there’s still the vocab problem.

Enter Turin and Perfumes: The Guide, co-authored by his equally gifted wife, Tania Sanchez. They met through perfume, poetically enough: Turin was blogging about scent; she replied to some of his posts, “and her writing seemed to be in fluorescent pink, somehow”; he asked her to cast her eye over his previous book, The Secret of Scent; they met; they married last year in New York. They are now the unwitting Brangelina of the scent world.

Perfumes: The Guide is one of the best books I have ever read. It is dazzlingly good. There isn’t a sentence out of place; Sanchez matches Turin for writing with wonderful style and wit, and encyclopaedic knowledge; and every entry — there are 1,500 of them — is like a good short story: Dorothy Parker by way of Proust. They don’t mince their words, either: they have a nice line in utterly devastating put-downs. But they also guide you towards scents you’d never have tried otherwise. Pleasingly, they are not snobs. There has always been a sense among perfume addicts that niche brands were automatically superior to mass-market ones; that anything you could pick up for less than £30 was bound to be dramatically inferior to a bottle thrice the price. Not so, say Turin and Sanchez: most of the greatest noses — of whom there aren’t many — work for the huge firms as well as the smaller ones (for which they moonlight because they’re “so fed up [with the constraints imposed by some of the big firms] that they can’t stand it”).

Their guide will lead you to make extraordinary olfactory discoveries. Turin himself led me to the One when I met him and his wife (their house is literally stuffed with scent bottles — on the wall, in piles, in boxes, on tables: writing their guide took a year of daily sniffing). “Smell this,” he said, pushing a little bottle of Bulgari Black in front of me. “I don’t say this very often, but it would be very good on you.” More than very good, it turns out — the stuff is life-changing. That’s the thing about finding an amazing scent: you just feel it’s you, but better, in a bottle. “Look at this one,” Turin says, picking up Jatamansi (L’Artisan Parfumeur). “Done by a complete beginner, but wonderful.”

“This one,” says Sanchez of another bottle, “is a train wreck.”

“Do you know,” says Turin, “that the formula represents 3% of its total cost?” The rest is packaging and marketing.

“I have a friend who works for a perfume company,” Sanchez says. “They wanted to put a sticker on the bottle, but doing so would have cost more than the entire perfume.”

“Good perfume used to come out of companies such as Estée Lauder,” says Turin, “and it cost 30 bucks. Now it costs $200 and you have to deal with some guy in a black turtleneck.”

Sanchez adds: “And there’s an issue with longevity. I called up Avon and said, ‘You sell more perfume than any company in the world, you’ve had huge sellers since the 1970s. Can you send me some?’ But the PR girl said, ‘No, we’re not going to sell those any more.’ I said, ‘People have been buying them for decades. Are you just going to cut them off?’ ” Apparently so, in the name of fashion — but then truly great perfume is outside fashion and, says Sanchez, “timeless”. Why, I ask, do they think nobody seems terribly interested in making classic perfumes any more? “They think a great perfume is a random event,” says Turin. “They think it’s an act of God. But Angel [Thierry Mugler], for example, wasn’t an act of God — it was the work of a genius. There’s often also a fabulous, panoramic ignorance of the past: they don’t know shit from shoeshine. I’m not saying, ‘Do the old stuff again,’ I’m saying, ‘Know how good it can be before you go ahead and do your Britney Spears.’ ”

The worst problem affecting the perfume industry, Turin says, is “a complete lack of art direction. Nobody realises that every great perfume was art-directed by somebody who had a clear vision of what he wanted, above and beyond the perfumer. There is fantastic cohesion between the smell, the bottle, the colour, the packaging — the whole thing is amazing, miraculous, not random. That doesn’t happen very often: now you’ve got some guy in marketing and a tie-in with some model. Art direction is why Serge Lutens [the famous creator of Shiseido Nombre Noire] is such a genius; he is obsessed to the point of disease”.

Sanchez and Turin are obsessed, too, but disease doesn’t come into it: they’re clever, funny, knowing and knowledgeable, and they’ll lead you by the hand into a whole new world of scent. I’ll bet you a fiver you’ll be down the shops later, spraying like mad. When you strip everything else away, perfume is liquid joy, and who doesn’t want a little bit of that?

What makes a fantastic perfume?

The question that women casually shopping for perfume ask more than any other is this: “What scent drives men wild?” After years of intense research, we know the definitive answer. It is bacon.

Now, on to the far more interesting subject of perfume. It is a mistake to think that the overwhelming reason for women to wear perfume is to attract the opposite sex. But, as the biophysicist and fragrance expert Dr Luca Turin once explained to me regarding the peculiar, temperature-independent scanty dress of many young women at night, what a woman on the prowl requires is something that men will register after six beers.

Perhaps this attention-getting olfactive strategy can also, in a way, explain the second mistake, milder than the first, but still quite wrong, that women tend to make when choosing a fragrance, which is to assume that the reason to wear perfume is to impersonate a flowerbed. This is a very fine strategy if your aim is to attract bees. Otherwise, you could do better.

Yes, everyone loves the smell of a fresh tea rose on its thorny stem or of warm, clustered jasmine blossoms, like white stars against their greenery, but a flower is not quite a perfume. The fragrances known as soliflores, meant to represent a single material or flower, nice as they may be, have a hard time competing with the best perfumes unless they cheat in more interesting directions, because, unlike perfumers, flowers aren’t interested in us. Flowers are more like plug-in air fresheners than perfumes. They emit a steady puff of stuff, which floats off and meets you at a distance and then flies away, replenished constantly. So, let us talk properly of perfume: what a woman’s perfume is for, and what makes it good, great or dismal.

Perfume is an art. The arts appeal in various ways to our various senses, and if you want to think long and hard about such things, I recommend reading a lot of Walter Pater. For the moment, let’s just say that, like all other arts, perfume should engage our attention to a satisfying end, first creating an expectation and then satisfying it in a way different and better than you’d hoped.

Everyone complains that new perfumes all smell alike, but occasionally, someone hits on a variation that constitutes a true advance. Great artistic advances are often spurred by technological ones: guitars go electric, prussian blue knocks down the price barrier to painting dusky skies, and ladies casually swan about smelling like peaches. As Turin points out, Guerlain Mitsouko is, in structure, basically Coty’s landmark, Chypre, with the peach base Persicol added. However, it doesn’t smell like two distinct things hashed together — far from it. Instead, it smells like a new creature, Mitsouko: an autumnal, poignant chord, rounded and full, something that feels, on first meeting, as if you have known it before, the way certain people you meet seem as if they were expecting you, or you them, even if you are strangers.

What we’re really talking about is the art of abstraction in perfumery: the creation of a new smell for its own qualities, and not for any fidelity to things already known. How is it done? Magic. The idea is simple enough once you know it’s there, but finding and recognising it is not so easy. You can no more predict the next great beautiful perfumery idea than you can the next catchy melody before you hear it.

Now, you may think perfumery is pretty easy if so much relies on happy accidents, but three things need to be in place for a happy accident to become worthwhile: someone must be obsessed and daring enough to tinker and generate new ideas; someone must be able to spot the one good idea among a host of useless ones; and someone needs the skill to realise the idea’s potential. The breathless claims of fragrance marketing to the contrary, it is just not true that fine ingredients guarantee a great perfume. Imagine chucking a fresh Maine lobster, a wheel of top-notch camembert and a pound of artisanal Venezuelan chocolate into a kettle and simmering in Chartreuse until Wednesday. Yummy? It doesn’t work for perfume, either.

Mitsouko (Guerlain)

Reference chypre Whenever I am asked to name my favourite fragrance, or the best fragrance ever, or the fragrance I would take with me if I had to move to Mars for tax reasons, I always say Mitsouko. This elicits, broadly speaking, three types of response: perfumers yawn, beginners write down the name and aficionados decide I am a staid sort of chap. In truth, it is a bit like saying your favourite painting is the Mona Lisa (not mine, by the way).

Mitsouko’s history illustrates to perfection the twin forces of innovation and imitation that move perfumery forward. It was released in 1919, supposedly the result of a love affair Jacques Guerlain had with Japan or a lady therein. But there is nothing Japanese about Mitsouko, aside from the name. It is, as has been said countless times before, an improvement on François Coty’s Chypre, released two years earlier. Chypre, in turn, was based on a three-component accord so perfect that it remains unsurpassed and fertile in new developments 90 years later. They smell, respectively, of citrus resinous, sweet-amber resinous and bitter resinous. Picture them as equal sectors making up a pie chart, sticking to each other via the resin. The resulting genre, called a chypre, has two fundamental qualities: balance and abstraction. Chypre is long gone, but I’ve had occasion to smell both vintage samples and the Osmothèque museum’s reconstruction in Versailles. It is brilliant, but it does have a big-boned, bad-tempered, Joan Crawford feel to it. It was a fragrance in whose company you could never entirely rest your weight.

Jacques Guerlain was Juan Gris to Coty’s Picasso, obsessed with fullness, finish, detail. To Chypre, he added the peach note of undecalactone, quite a lot of iris and probably 20 other things we’ll never know about. The lactone makes a huge difference: it works like a Tiffany lamp, adding a touch of muted warmth and colour, and, unlike ester-based fruit notes, lasts for ever. The effect of these additions is a ripening of the chypre structure into a masterpiece whose richness brings to my mind the mature chamber music of Johannes Brahms.

Mitsouko is also a survivor, most recently having dodged a bullet aimed straight at its heart by the European Union’s chemical phobia. It looked, for a while, as if it was going to be reformulated in a hurry. In the end, the great Edouard Fléchier brought Mitsouko into conformity with EU rules and it still smells great, though it arguably doesn’t last as long as the old one.

. . . and the worst

Pure Purple (Hugo Boss)

Cherry syrup Smells exactly like the synthetic flavour used in codeine syrup, but induces a hacking cough instead of relieving it.

Délices de Cartier (Cartier)

Fruity, vile There’s a sketch by Billy Connolly where two Glasgow drunks go to Rome, enter a bar, and ask: “What does the Pope drink?” The barman says: “Crème de menthe,” whereupon the two guys say: “Give us a pint,” and spend the rest of the week puking up green in various fountains. Substitute cassis for mint, and you have Délices.

Euphoria Men (Calvin Klein)

Nondescript “It’s about passion that stops at nothing” — not even flogging a rubbish fragrance for real money.

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With the dank days of winter hanging on and the sweet smell of green things growing still weeks away, shopping for a new fragrance should be promoted as the gloom buster of the season.

Sampling, sniffing, dipping in and out of mysterious bottles with evocative names Beyond Paradise; Capri; Be Delicious; Emerald Dream; Pure White Linen Breeze; Wrapped With Love can trigger memories, and make a day sing. And, once the fragrance is applied, just as with a sassy new hair cut, a new woman might appear.

No-one can pretend fragrances are cheap. But if there was ever a time for spending on something as frivolous as perfume, it is now. The right fragrance can change your mood, and your outlook. Want to project confidence? Sarah Jessica Parker’s Lovely is for you. Want to evoke your summer in Italy? Spritz yourself with Arden’s Mediterranean. Feeling pink and girlish? Gaultier’s Ma Dame might have your name on it. Hilary Duff’s almost edible Wrapped With Love will appeal to chocoholics, and Oscar de La Renta’s heady-with-vanilla Oscar is for those with a penchant for extravagance.

Fragrances are divided into four broad groups: fresh, floral, oriental, woody. Within those families are happy marriages, odd couples, second cousins and lonely spinsters. Some have distinctive assertive notes, others are mere whimseys of the perfumiers’ art, but there will be one for you.

We can be drawn to someone because they are wearing a particular scent. It might be the fragrance of violets (Dior’s J’Adore, Lauder’s Emerald Dream, Michael Kors‘ Sheer), the clean, soft warmth of iris (Chanel No.19, Prada Milano, Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle), an effervescent mix of citrus and florals (Green Tea Tropical, Lauder’s Pure White linen Light Breeze), florals and musk ( Vicktor Rolfe, Narciso Rodriguez, Stella by Stella McCartney).

Or it might be a fragrance that seems to have been with us always, yet remains sensual and evocative, reminding us of forever-elegant women (Chanel No.5, Givenchy Ysatis, L’Eau D’Issey).

A warning though. Perfume is never one-fits-all, so don’t expect the fragrance that suits a colleague or friend to suit you as well. Skin type, colouring, even personality, can affect the various fragrance notes, especially when the perfume has been composed using synthetic scents.

This is not a criticism: most of today’s fragrances are manufactured this way. The days when all perfumes were made with tonnes of white jasmine flowers carried by donkeys from the hills around Grasse to the distilleries in the town, are as romantic but alas as distant as the days of steam engines on the Orient Express.

The best method of selecting your new perfume is to go sampling, sniffing and dipping in and out of mysterious bottles …

Fragrance-counter tips

Never rub a perfume in leave it on the skin to release its fragrance, slowly.

Spray fragrance onto pulse points, where the warmth will release its true note.

Don’t spray fragrance onto clothes it can stain.Don’t spray and then sit in the sun. The little drops of fragrance will leave tiny white marks on skin and clothing.

Wear fragrance every day, rather than for special nights out.

Don’t keep a fragrance for a special occasion, but if you insist, keep it in a cool, dark space. Light and heat can affect the fragrance in the bottle.

Vary your fragrances. Build up a wardrobe of different scents and each day select the one that suits your mood or your clothes.

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The Paris Commercial Court struck a blow against consumer choice in its recent eBay decision. Most of the commentary on the June 30 judgment has focused on eBay’s status as an electronic auction house and on the issue of counterfeit products. What has been overlooked is the anticompetitive and anticonsumer nature of the court’s decision.

In its ruling the court promotes a restrictive form of retailing, known as selective distribution, over all other considerations — even to the point of being willing to undermine real competition in the market. EBay will be locked out of the French perfume market, to the detriment of consumers and market competition.

The Paris Commercial Court has a reputation as one of the great commercial courts of Europe, so its eBay judgment could reverberate across the European Union. But other courts should have a very close look at the judgment before choosing to follow in its wake.

EBay was condemned for infringing the selective distribution systems of French perfume brands such as LVMH, Dior, Kenzo, Givenchy and Guerlain. These companies each select a limited number of distributors with the know-how to look after their perfume products. EBay, by contrast, provided another means for consumers to buy these products. The Paris judges ordered eBay to stop allowing the sale of these perfume brands on its auction site and to pay damages amounting to €40 million.

Selective or specialized distribution systems can benefit consumers. In the case of complex electronic products or products with safety issues, it makes sense to ensure that knowledgeable staff are on hand to help consumers. What makes less sense, but was accepted by the European Court of Justice in the 1996 Leclerc perfume cases, is the idea that specialized distribution systems should also apply to luxury products so that an appropriate “aura of luxury” can be maintained.

Yet the European Court of Justice also recognized that such specialized distribution systems could be anticompetitive if no room is left for any other form of distribution. It further allowed that selective distribution can lead to price rigidity across the market or make it easier for the brand owners and distributors to fix prices.

In the eBay judgment, however, selective distribution systems can do no wrong. The right of the brand owners to their specialized networks prevailed over every other consideration. A very disturbing feature of the judgment is the court’s argument that branded quality perfumes could be sold only through distribution systems which brand owners control. There was no recognition that EU law permits other forms of lawful sales. For instance, it is perfectly legal to buy branded perfume products from other member states and bring them into France, or for French consumers to simply resell the products themselves.

It is particularly surprising that a French court would ignore the dangers that stem from selective distribution in the branded perfume sector. It was only in 2006 that most of the plaintiffs in the eBay suit were fined for price-fixing by the French Competition Commission. The perfume makers in that case had threatened to remove their brands from their chosen retailers if those retailers did not keep prices high. The perfume makers also struck deals with national retail chains to ensure there was little or no price competition among the vendors or the perfume houses. In all the price-fixers were fined €46.2 million.

It is also instructive to compare the Paris ruling with the recent decision of a U.S. federal court in New York in Tiffany v. eBay. Internet hosts such as eBay have a responsibility to take down illegal products, such as counterfeit jewelry items, where they are notified. The Paris and New York cases both raised the issue of eBay’s broader legal responsibility for illegal products appearing on its Web site. The U.S. court recognized the extent to which any marketplace host can be responsible for the behavior of sellers. While eBay was required to remove counterfeits when notified, the U.S. court ruled, it was ultimately the trademark owner’s responsibility to police its trademark. By contrast, the Paris court held that eBay is liable for the behavior of sellers. The French judges were even willing to sidestep EU legislation which gives Internet hosts a degree of legal immunity.

The hosting issue reinforces the impression of a court that is unwilling to grapple with the complexities of e-commerce and which responds by imposing blanket liabilities on disruptive commercial outsiders.

Aside from the anticompetitive dangers of selective distribution and the hosting rules, illustrated by the French Competition Commission’s ruling, there is the broader issue of why selective distribution should apply to “luxury products.” Is an “aura of luxury” something that consumers really value? The entire thrust of modern EU competition law is that selective distribution is suspect, and that any special regime has to be able to substantively justify any restriction on the grounds of consumer value. It’s unlikely that any selective distribution system for perfume can make that case.

Even for products for which selective distribution could more easily be justified, such as motor vehicles — which are very complex and present a high level of safety concerns linked to their manufacture and maintenance — Brussels has recently put forward a strong consumer case for abolishing the specialized distribution rules which apply to that very complex mechanical product. If motor vehicles do not need their own special distribution rules, can we justify permitting brand owners to control the distribution of perfume via a small specialized network?

Brussels must consider urgently whether it should intervene directly in the appeal in the eBay case to keep the judgment from undermining competition in branded-products sectors across Europe. It also needs to include in its coming review of vertical distribution regime whether the rights of selective distributors need to be cut back to maximize consumer choice and consumer value.

Mr. Riley is a professor at City Law School in London and an associate research fellow at the Center for European Policy Studies.

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THE STORY OF FRANKINCENSE AND ITS ASSOCIATION WITH AMOUAGE:

Aromatic flowers, herbs and resin gathered from trees have long been the key ingredients of all perfumes since ancient times. Originally burned as incense and used in religious ceremonies, it wasn’t until 1,000 BC - when the hedonistic Egyptians invented glass and bottled the heavenly scents - did perfume become a beauty enhancement. So popular did the art of perfume bottling become, the culture was soon adopted by the Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Israelites, Hindus and the Chinese.

The most prized perfume ingredient came from the Boswellia tree – better known as the frankincense tree - with the highest grade of resin found in the foothills of Oman’s Dhofar region.

Long described as the “Perfume of the Gods”, it was the region’s “silver frankincense”  - the finest and most fragrant resin to be found – that beguiled many monarchs and rulers from afar to seek out the plant. So valuable and desirable, Alexander the Great, decided to invade Southern Arabia and seize the land where the frankincense grew. Only his unexpected death prevented the attack.

OMAN’S SCENTED HERITAGE:

Though the frankincense trade diminished in importance over time the tradition of cultivating the finest and most exotic fragrant grade resin has remained an important part of Oman’s rich heritage.  So significant is its legacy to the history of perfume, on the request of the Sultanate’s present ruler, His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said, His Royal Highness Sayyid Hamad bin Hamood Al bin Said revived the tradition of perfume-making in Oman in 1983.

His Royal Highness subsequently commissioned Guy Robert, the renowned French perfumier behind the scents of Hermés, Dior and Rochas, to formulate a new and exotic fragrance that would incorporate native Omani ingredients - frankincense and myrrh as well as rosewater extracted from the rarest rock rose found in Oman’s Jebel Akhdar region.

Monsieur Robert soon unveiled one of the world’s most priceless and desirable scents, Amouage; combining over 100 essences and packaged in silver bottles plated with 24 carrot gold by Aspreys of London.  A decade later House of Amouage unveiled a more accessible perfume, Ubar, aptly named for the illustrious city that was once at the centre of the vibrant frankincense trade.

To celebrate its 25th Anniversary, House of Amouage recently released Jubilation XXV Eau de Parfum, which was followed by the opening of its flagship store in Muscat’s Sabco Centre.

“When visitors enter House of Amouage’s elegant insignia brand doors, they cross the threshold into a luxurious world straight from A Thousand Nights,” says Mona Tannous, Australian Director of Oman Ministry of Tourism. Designed to reflect its Arabian heritage, House of Amouage’s entrance not only features a striking lantern suspended from a domed ceiling but also a series of product rooms that reflect the perfume’s evolution.

Plans to open a brand boutique in Dubai in late 2008 will be followed by the opening of two London boutiques; at Selfridges’ flagship store in Regent Street and Fortnum & Mason in Piccadilly.

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Anna Sui: Dolly Girl Lil’ Starlet reviewed by Laura Pashley, 23, Sheffield

Verdict: Initially I found this perfume rather overwhelming but after wearing it a few times I grew to really like it and my colleagues commented that it was a nice fragrance.

Unfortunately, it wore off quickly over the day.

It was also expensive for an eau de toilette and I didn’t like the woman’s head bottle - I wouldn’t want it on my dressing table - it would scare me!

Score: 7 out of 10.

Where to buy: Available from most leading department stores nationwide.

Davidoff Cool Water for Women reviewed by Majella Doherty, 49, Londonderry

Verdict: I would never leave the house without wearing perfume.

Although I’ve never tried Cool Water before, I thought it was good value for money with nice packaging.

The first few times I wore it, I found the scent to be very strong - although the more I wore it, the less I noticed this.

I would possibly use it again but I wouldn’t be rushing out to buy it.

Score: 6 out of 10

Where to buy: Available at leading department stores and pharmacies.

Kylie Minogue Showtime reviewed by Lisa Burke, 37, London

Verdict: I liked this and at first, for a celebrity scent, it seemed quite good value for money.

I liked the pretty pink box it came in and the bottle as well. While the smell was nice and sweet, and I would wear it again, I found it wore off quickly which was annoying.

In terms of buying it again, I’m not sure. If it were a little cheaper I would but the fact that it wore off so quickly does put me off.

Score: 7 out of 10.

Where to buy: Available at leading department stores and pharmacies.

Sarah Jessica Parker reviewed by Jennifer Skyers, 42, Surrey

Verdict: I found this very pleasant and ,at £29 per 50ml, it was a snip.

The packaging was OK but could be more snazzy in keeping with SJP’s “fashionista” character.

I would wear it again as it wasn’t too strong/weak and had a pleasant floral smell and lasted virtually all day. I didn’t have any problems with it and think it’s good value for money.

Its light smell makes it more suited to daywear.

Score: 7 out of 10

Dior Addict 2 Summer Litchi EDT reviewed by Zoey Arato, 26, Bradford

Verdict: This is a nice, summery daytime scent and I loved the bottle - especially with the on/off button.

However, it faded within an hour and by the time I got to work I had to reapply and continue to do so throughout the day.

If the smell lasted longer then I think it would be value for money but, as it fades so quickly, I would want it to be a little cheaper. I had no irritation and would use this again but only if it was cheaper.

Score: 8 out of 10

Chloe Eau de Parfum reviewed by Lucy Hayhurst, 36, Northwich, Cheshire

Verdict: It’s OK but much, much too expensive.

The packaging is very nice but the scent is strong and overpowering and I just didn’t like it.

However, if you are keen on that kind of thing it did last all day and there was no need to reapply.

I didn’t have any problems using the perfume but I wouldn’t use it again as it’s just not my kind of scent.

Score: 2 out of 10

Calvin Klein Eternity - Summer reviewed by Kelly Fallon, 27, Goole, East Yorks

Verdict: This scent made me think of spending a summer’s day in the park with a picnic.

I really liked this perfume.

The floral scent was light enough for day wear and it was good value for money.

The simple packaging was also very appealing.

The only real downside was that it only lasted a couple of hours. I didn’t have any irritation and would use again.

Score: 7 out of 10

Where to buy: At department stores and pharmacies or call 0800 083 6310.

Tesco Red Rose and Jasmine (£4.99 for 50ml) reviewed by Jayne Pickard, 48, Keighley, West Yorks

Verdict: Red Rose and Jasmine sounded like an “old lady” perfume. But giving it the benefit of the doubt, I sprayed it on and was pleasantly surprised.

I quite liked the lightness of it but not enough.

The packaging screams cheap. I wouldn’t display it on my dressing table with my expensive perfumes.

I wouldn’t use it again, the name is off-putting, the box looks cheap and the scent is too weak.

Score: 3 out of 10.

Where to buy: Tesco stores. 0800 505 555.

Floris London: Stephanotis (100ml for £46.50 and 50ml £31) reviewed by Alison Webster, 39, Market Harborough

Verdict: I was delighted with this perfume - it made me feel graceful and elegant.

The lovely scent brought some positive compliments from my colleagues.

It did fade as the day wore on and would need to be reapplied during the afternoon.

I wouldn’t normally pay this much for perfume but it is good value for money.

Score: 9 out of 10.

Avon Flower by Cynthia Rowley (£14 for 50ml) reviewed by Susan Haslam, 59, Chorley, Lancs

Verdict: This perfume brought to mind a heavily scented garden.

I liked the packaging - the bottle was lovely to display in a bedroom. But, sadly, the smell was too strong for me.

The scent lasted about half a day before it needed to be reapplied. Although the perfume didn’t appeal to me, a few of my friends tested it and the majority liked it, so it is really down to personal taste.

Score: 6 out of 10

Davidoff Cool Water Women Freeze Me (£25 for 100ml) reviewed by Gaynor Turley, 53, Aberdare, South Wales

Verdict: I thought this perfume was OK but maybe a little overpriced. I really liked the packaging - especially the bottle.

In truth, Freeze Me was very musky and fruity, and not the usual smell that I would go for. When I applied it was too strong at first but it calmed down after a few minutes and lasted about half a day before it wore off.

I didn’t have any problems with this scent but I wouldn’t go out and buy it myself.

However, I did really like the fact that you could freeze it and keep it in the fridge - making it very refreshing on a warm sunny day.

Score: 7 out of 10.

Where to buy: Available at leading department stores and pharmacies.

Britney Believe reviewed by Kendal Smales, 15, Barnsley

Verdict: I thought the perfume was light, fresh and summery and would definitely appeal to my age group. It was very good value for money and I found the packaging bright and funky.

The unusually-shaped bottle would look good on your dressing table. I also loved the smell, as did everyone else! It was a very sweet and pleasant without being overbearing and you only needed one or two squirts.

Lots of people asked me what gorgeous perfume I was wearing. It was fairly strong at first but calmed down afterwards. I wouldn’t say it lasted all day but it did linger.

Rock on, Britney! Score: 8 out of 10.

Marks & Spencer: Infusion reviewed by Carol Bozward, 61, St Helens, Merseyside

Verdict: This perfume was OK but not special and I wouldn’t pay £12 for it.

The packaging was all right but would have been better with the flowers on the box cut out to look like a stencil.

The smell was very nice but the perfume was too weak and did not last any real length of time.

I wouldn’t buy it or use it again for myself, as I prefer stronger perfumes that last all day.

I would purchase it for someone else as an Christmas or birthday present if it was priced about £6 to £8.

Score: 6 out of 10.

Where to buy: Available from Marks & Spencer stores nationwide.

Miss Sixty Summer Collection (£ 24.95 for 30ml) reviewed by Hazel White, 27, Pembury, Kent

Verdict: This had a nice summery but didn’t stand out as unique. So, although I might pay £ 10 for this, I wouldn’t pay £25.

The packaging was good and had a funky, modern design but it was difficult to spray.

I would say it was about right for summer scent but it was pretty and I needed to spray on gallons so it was noticed.

I wouldn’t wear it on a night out might keep it as a ” back- up” scent.

Score: 7 out of 10.

Where to buy: Available from department stores nationwide.

Jennifer Lopez: Deseo reviewed by Sarah Bowler, 37, Cardiff

Verdict: Now this is a heavy perfume - definitely for the evening.

I think £21 is a fair price for it, considering it is a celebrity scent but I wouldn’t pay more.

I tend not to go for this type of smell, I prefer a lighter fragrance.

But it did last all day and actually I thought the smell improved and got lighter as the day wore on.

A few of my friends commented on the scent and were surprised it was J Lo’s - one even thought it smelt fairly masculine!

Score: 5 out of 10

Kate Moss: Kate (£29 for 50ml) reviewed by Juliet Edwards, 40, Nottingham

Verdict: Kate’s scent is sweet and feminine, and surprisingly good value for money.

The packaging was nice but the bottle looked cheap and a little bit dull. It could have been more elegant.

The scent was nice - although it was a little too strong at first and too weak later in the day.

If you consider the price, smell and Kate Moss representing Topshop, the perfume would appeal to the age group that likes to follow her style.

Score: 7 out of 10

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The Oscars of the fragrance industry - the FiFi Awards - honored the top fragrances and the people behind them on Tuesday, May 20 at their 36th annual celebration in New York.

Daisy by Marc Jacobs, a Coty Prestige fragrance, won Fragrance of the Year in the women’s luxury category, while Dolce & Gabanna Light Blue Pour Homme (P&G Prestige Products, Inc.) took home the same award in the men’s category. A women’s and men’s “Nouveau Niche” award was given to Prada Infusion d’Iris (Puig Beauty and Fashion Group) and Armani Prive Vetiver Babylone (Giorgio Armani Beauty), respectively.

Designer Vera Wang was honored with a Hall of Fame award, presented by New York Ranger Sean Avery and current Vogue intern, where Wang was once a fashion editor. Did Avery think hockey or fashion was more vicious? “That’s an interesting question,” laughed Avery. “I would definitely say hockey. I think fashion is certainly tough and competitive, but it’s definitely not as physically dangerous as hockey.”

Wang was humbled to be receiving the award.

“It’s something beyond my dreams,” Wang said. “My mother adored fragrance, she educated me in fragrance. We lived in Paris a great deal throughout my life, so fragrance has been a part of my upbringing. But to somehow win an award for fragrance - a Hall of Fame award - is inconceivable to me.”

As for Wang’s own future fragrance plans - currently she has four fragrances for women and one eau de toilette for men - she’d like to do a line of essential oils, “where price is not an issue at all and it’s just a totally luxurious product,” she said.

Scent, and particular perfumes, are often the basis for some of the most powerful memories. Actress Bernadette Peters recalled her first fragrance memory.

“My earliest fragrance memory was of my mother’s,” said Peters. “She wore Arpege, so when I look at a Lanvin purse, I look for that little lady that they sometimes hang from a medallion, because I remember that used to be on the bottle. She always wore perfume. There was something called Sen-Sen that you put under your tongue. It’s another fragrance that you put in your mouth, and then your breath smells sweet. Sometimes when she was out of Sen-Sen she’d put perfume in her mouth!”

Designer Zac Posen, who will release his first fragrance for women in December and is also working on a fragrance for men, remembered certain packaging first and foremost - something often more interesting than the smell of fragrances themselves.

“I remember an Elsa Peretti bottle, I think she designed it for Halston, it was a really cool shape,” he said. “Then I went through a stage of collecting great, really kitsch perfume bottles of Avon.”

“The first fragrance I purchased was probably Obsession,” continued Posen. “That’s a young, undiscovered gay boy’s idea of sexuality or sensuality.”

Tradition goes hand-in-hand with fragrance, whether you’re a young girl surrounded by great Parisian fragrances, like Wang was, or a New York kid like Posen making his first discoveries of the nature of sensuousness.

“Patou, Chanel, Balmain, Dior, Guerlain - they were legacies!” said Wang. “They influenced generations of women. Their grandmother wore them, their mother wore them, their daughters wear it. I think it’s a bit of that tradition of fragrance that I really got to enjoy, and that’s what I enjoy so much about doing fragrance.”

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