Accidentally West

Yesterday morning was meant to be productive. Alas not. My key errand for the day didn't produce the desired result. I was left sitting in a Pret a Manger near High Holborn trying, over a coffee, to figure out how to get some useful result from travelling into town.

I decided to go to Notting Hill.

I have advertising postcards with the graphic from the site and blog (the lovely picture of Florence) overlaid with text regarding the site. They are very useful for sticking in stores and cafes, and posting through letter boxes. I had a bunch in my bag and had planned on doing Notting Hill at some point soon, so thought 'why not today'.

Off I went on the Central Line, getting out at the Notting Hill tube station. I wandered down to Portobello Road and stuck cards in various places.

While doing this, and then getting thoroughly lost looking for the bus home, I noticed a number of interesting things.

1) Notting Hill smells of pizza -- really good, brick-oven-baked. I came across this fragrance three or four times during my meanderings.

2) Some of the rather huge white villas have lacy, lattice-work balconies, seeming more of an Italian city than London. I noticed a cat picking its way along one of these and felt like I was back a hundred years in time.

3) I stopped at Diptyque on Westbourne Grove to spray on one of the most glorious of perfumes, Philosykos, the company's wonderful fig-based fragrance. I noticed the store was featuring a new set of two candles: Beauty and the Beast. Beauty is a fairly light, somewhat generic floral. Beast, however, is beautifully beastly: vetiver and patchouli, among other things. Alas, these are only sold in the set, so no lone beast.

4) When I finally found a bus stop with a bus that would take me part of the way home, an elderly man smoking a pipe passed by me and I was, for a moment, enveloped in the rough-sweet smell of his tobacco.

Notting Hill doesn't seem to quite part of the normal world to me. For one thing, many of the people you walk by are very perfect: beautiful clothes, lovely hair, big sunglasses for both the men and women. Not quite regular.

This 'difference' is put into stark relief when you cross over the Grand Union Canal and move into the edges of the Queens Park neighbourhood. Once again, we return to what I perceive to be the real world: some people are tubby, less expensive but funkier clothing, children that still have chocolate around their mouths. In any case, I was pleased to have been able to salvage the morning and give it a proper context...

I Profumi di Firenze Violetta di Bosco

Violets. I love them as flowers. If I am asked to list my favourite blooms, violets always drop into the top three. I have them growing in the titchy garden, both the lovely purple blossoms and a black variety with a smaller purple/green leaf. They spread quite happily and don't seem to care that the soil I've got isn't that plant-friendly.

I haven't sampled many violet perfumes and the ones I have tried haven't really caught my attention. I tried Violetta di Bosco ages ago very briefly and got violet candy.

None of that this time. How strange. How rewarding.

I Profumi di Firenze's Violetta di Bosco is quite an interesting turn from the mainstream of violets.

First of all, it actually smells like something planted, which is quite nice. By this, I mean I get a dirt aspect, and some green sap with the scent of early morning springtime air (a bit moist, rather cool). The soft, powdery floral is overlaid on this. So, a full combination.

As this unfolds and warms on the skin, it takes on a similar quality to another powdery note in perfumery, iris. It does not smell like iris at all. Rather, there is something a little rough, a little other-worldly about it.

The longer it is on my skin, the more I have a sense of this fragrance being of something slightly magical. Maybe I am reading too much stuff about mythical creatures recently, but it makes me think of faeries, of wood nymphs, of dryads.

And like iris, it has a bit of the shape-shifter about it: it almost falls over into soapiness but that taint of wildness saves it.

I have read a number of reviews of this. Sometimes it is called operatic and being appropriate to a diva. Only in one write-up has there been reference made to this 'otherness' that I am getting.

A few hours in, I get a touch of violet pastille candy, very deep down under the forest strangeness of the fragrance. I find it doesn't detract from the perfume's overall 'otherness', though.

Violetta di Bosco is eau de parfum, and as with other IPDFs that I stock it comes in a splash bottle with a separate spray attachment. The lasting power is quite good -- the better for you to enjoy its beguiling otherness.

"Walking in the Wild West End..."

We visited the Westfield Shopping Centre in West London on Saturday. It. Is. Big.

It has lots of shops. I know that isn't something unusual or extraordinary in an urban environment. London has lots of shopping centres. The thing is that Westfield reminds me more of an American mall than any place I've shopped in here in London.

We didn't do any scent shopping. Rather, it was toy shops and Game.

Oh, and dampened down Mexican street food at Wahaca. I like Wahaca. My boy loooooves Wahaca. But eating at Wahaca is frustrating. First, I hate what they've done to the spelling (from Oaxaca). Second, each time I eat a tame burrito I wish someone would open some places equivalent to what you get in Brooklyn (which I know some purists think are dampened down vs what you get in cities nearer the Mexican border): these are storefronts, a few tables but mostly takeaway, where you get huge tasty burritos, tacos, etc, with proper scary hot sauce, a reasonably priced beer and some real attitude.

But on to the issue of fragrance. When I think about going West in London I almost invariably get a particular ear-worm from a Dire Straits song called Expresso Love:

She gets the sun in the daytime
Perfume in the dusk.
Then she come out in the night-time
With the honeysuckle musk.

This is from a long ways ago -- I was around 20 and hangdog from love. I was already a serious perfumista and the lyric stuck in my head and heart.

I can't think of many pop songs that actually get the idea of someone's scent, of their fragrance ritual, right and this really does nail it.

In fact, I am completely taken by the idea of this combination, honeysuckle and musk. I have yet to find a fragrance using the two that lives up to my perception of how said perfume should smell.

I have the idea that this should be representative of a hot, sticky, humid summer night. I've smelled honeysuckle perfumes, but none of them have been like this. I've smelled musks: no dice.

I'm not interested in combining honeysuckle and musk oils to get there. I'm sure it wouldn't work: too sweet or too musky. And I want it as a proper perfume, properly composed, well thought-out.

The point of honeysuckle, to my mind, is it is indolic but not obviously so. You stick you nose in the flowers and it hits you once finished with the smelling, a few feet away, how animalic it is.

So, what I want is something heavy on that indolic aspect, maybe some immortelle to make it even stickier (yes, I'm stuck on immortelle at the moment), a musk note that doesn't stamp on the honeysuckle, and some other things to round it out. I want unctious. I want sillage. I want a man or woman bending to sniff the neck of someone wearing this to go completely liquid, to be undone by the fragrance.

So. What do we think the likelihood is that some perfumer out there will actually do it? I live in hope.

Autumn yearnings

I know the autumn equinox occurred on Monday but I wanted to mark it nonetheless. You will all know by now that almost everything I come into contact with makes me think of fragrance, whether it's something I smell or see or touch.

Well, I was reading Amy's wonderful blog on fashion (www.style-spy.blogspot.com) the other day and she was posting (partially) about Vivienne Westwood, who I think is ace -- for all kinds of reasons.

I'm small and sort of curvy and it's hard to find clothes that work really well on me. I. Do. Pencil Skirts. Oh, and curvy jackets.

Amy's post sent me looking at things Vivienne.

I had a think about one of her fragrances, Boudoir, which is slinky and sexy and animalic all in one go and comes in a nice bottle. Boudoir, which alas I can't wear, seems all about contrasts: specifically, it is very powdery but has this animalic kick to it. Perfect for autumn, ya know.

This got me thinking of leaf-turning-colour fragrances, which I'll get back to.

But first to digress a little. After reading Amy's post, I had a look at net-a-porter, for things I can't dream of affording right now. And, there they were...

First there was this:

And then there was this.

Big sigh of desire. I'm not one to say I could rock this or I could rock that outfit. But, I do think I could rock both of those. I've put the pictures in my diary/dream/desire book so I can at least keep them in my head.

But back to autumn fragrances.

Autumn to me means being able to wear lovely heavy unctious things again. Not comfort scents, but things you might metaphorically want to rub between your fingers solely for the wonderful way they feel on the skin.

Tauer's L'Air du Desert and Lonestar Memories fill that. So do I Profumi di Firenze's Ambra del Nepal and Spezie de Medici. LDDM is all ambery-incense -- smoky and other-worldly. Lonestar's leather-smokiness is perfect for cooler days. Ambra del Nepal is all lush sweetness and Spezie de Medici's spiked smoothed out citrus is perfect for the contrast of a warm house and a cooler outside.

Hilde Soliani's tobacco-coffee Bell'Antonio is all honeyed warmth and smoothness. Again, perfect for autumn.

We're talking here of incensy-ambery-spicy-smoky-leathery concoctions. Strong, full fragrances. Lots of sillage. Fragrances that cling enticingly to scarves and coat collars.

Autumn also means I bring out my bottle of Dior Hypnotic Poison. The almond and vanilla heaviness is gorgeous on crisp autumn days (I did finally try Poison and am afraid I have to say I don't 'get' the attraction of this one at all -- very generic floral on me).

A last entrant in the autumn roster is Le Labo's not-patchouli-but-smoky-birch-tar Patchouli 24. This is a very oily scent indeed -- and very very smoky. Autumn evenings in front of a fire.

So, I send along good autumn wishes, dear fragrant readers. May you enjoy all the smells of the season.

A funny experience at the bank

I do most of my banking online. However, every once in a while I have to venture into the local branch.

A few days ago I had some things to do there and strangely enough it turned out to be a very interesting experience, both visually and fragrance-wise.

First, there was the visual: two older women (probably late 60s) whose dress was very interesting. One woman had flaming red hair and was wearing a green strapless dress and aqua pashmina along with pink flipflops (zories, thong shoes, whathaveyou). It's getting a bit colder here and people are generally pulling out their autumn stuff. So, she really stood out.

The other woman was less flamboyant but also dressed for high summer. I was very impressed by her coral toe-nail polish and toe rings.

But the third woman was the one that really got me. Long red-henna-d hair in a plait and wafting patchouli oil.

Whatever she was wearing wasn't a refined perfume. Nope, this was the serious single-note oil. And strong it was!

I happen to love patchouli and wore Santa Maria Novella's gorgeous rendition for a good while. But it no longer works on me so I have to appreciate it on others.

Patchouli oil on its own is very 1960s, but refined with flowers, incense and perfumers' other ingredients it can come close to subtle while still retaining its unique rough-woodiness.

Patchouli keeps Thierry Mugler's Angel from tipping over into silliness. It is smoothed out in the Jalaine (formerly Bagutta Life) rendition. It adds sexiness to the Chanel Exclusif Coromandel. It mixes with oakmoss in Histoires de Parfums' chypre'd Noir Patchouli. It is again smoothed and citrus-tweaked in Parfumerie Generale's Intransigant Patchouli.

The thing about patchouli is it is a very beautiful animalic fragrance that can shape-shift depending how it is used by a perfumer. It can stand on its own, but it can also be a bit of a zeilig: it can mimic the feel of other ingredients with which it is paired.

So, all in, an unexpected waft at the local bank sends me off thinking of one fragrance note's many potential personalities.

A group hug? Now for a group smell

I've been invited by a neighbour to do a scent gathering (I wrote about doing one of these at the end of July) for her reading group, which meets once a month. Mostly they have something to eat, drink some wine and discuss books. We'll do sampling and discuss the fragrances I stock at Scent-and-Sensibility Perfume. That will probably take place in early October. I will blog about the experience.

I'm also going to pursue some similar gathering but in more commercial settings in London. I'll update as I have more information.

But regarding scent gatherings, I really enjoy doing them. Participants sometimes need a bit of time to break the ice and feel comfortable talking about smells, particularly if it isn't something they do on a regular basis, but it seems to me that after a bit everyone gets into it.

I don't sell perfumes at these gatherings, but participants can give me orders which I take away to fill. It is very important to me to register customers in the website.

Discussing smells seems to draw most people out: I like this, I don't like that, that smells like something I remember from a long time ago but I can't put my finger on it.

The participants who are regular perfume-wearers usually have strong opinions on the blotters of fragrance passed around. Frequently they are familiar with the language of fragrance and can express themselves confidently. For those who have worn fragrance infrequently and/or have only received it as a gift, it takes a bit to get comfortable trying to describe the things they are smelling.

It is fascinating, as an evening unfolds, to see how participants relax and get into discussing what 'families' of fragrances they like or dislike and why.

It is also interesting to hear people explain why they think they gravitate towards citrus, floral, oriental, etc, and to see the suprise on the face of a participant who has only ever worn soft clean florals when they discover that they really do like strong, incensy perfumes.

Sampling and discussing fragrances can push some people's envelopes or comfort zones. Because smell is such a primal sense it can cause some scent gathering participants to question previous assumptions they had held about themselves.

I'm not saying I've experienced major life-changing events at scent gatherings. Rather, I think some people have gone away from the experience with the feeling of having opened up or out, and this has had a positive impact.

To close on a less profound note, I do think scent gatherings can be really enjoyable experiences because they tap into our desire for pleasure and pleasure shared is definitely pleasure multiplied.

If you are a London resident and are interested in participating in a scent gathering or would like to set one up in your area send along an email, with 'scent gathering' in the header, to info@scent-and-sensibility.co.uk.

As to the commercial gatherings, it will be several months before I focus on these, but, again, if you are interested in being informed about them, send an email and I'll add you to the mailing list.

CJScents: First Anniversary

Sending along congratulations to Candice of CJScents. It's the first anniversary for her perfume site.

If you visit www.cjscents.com, there's a celebratory offer on until 2 October for 20% off on an order of $40 or over.

As CJ says, What's a party without friends?

Oh, to reek

So, the site is up, running, working, available, live -- take your pick. There's been a bit of to-ing and fro-ing as a few things needed tweaking. The email lagged a bit behind the site itself, which the developers at Holbi had said it would.

I was filling sample orders last week and am now contemplating whether I need latex gloves for this.

You see, if I have a six sample order of widely varying scents I come away from filling it smelling completely weird. I can end up reeking (in a good way) of a combo of floral, incense, citrus and oriental. I can't say I mind it that much, but I am aware I smell discombobulated.

I've blogged about layering fragrances in the past and how I don't do it. Partaking of all this mixing of scents reinforces that feeling in me. But, it also throws up some contemplations about perfumes that do work very well together.

These ideas come from my site stock, as that is what I'm filling samples from. So, here goes...

* I Profumi di Firenze Ambra del Nepal and Vaniglia del Madagascar: gourmand sexy amber. Completely delicious.

* Tauer Perfumes L'Air du Desert Marocain and I Profumi Ambra del Nepal: sweetened oriental.

* Tauer Perfumes L'Air du Desert Marocain and Tauer Perfumes Lonestar Memories: incensy leather.

* Tauer Perfumes Lonestar Memories and Lostmarc'h Ael-Mat: jasmine-leather.

I'm sure I'll come up with more along the way.

I am also reading Mandy Aftel's book Essence and Alchemy, which throws up interesting ideas about smell, magic and alterations of the senses. It makes the point that fragrance has always been treasured by some and mistrusted by others. An interesting dichotomy.

Comfort? The smell of chlorine

I've done a fair number of posts about the smell of the ocean, the dunes, skin after a swim in the sea. I think these are glorious fragrances and among the loveliest aspects of some perfumes. The salted skin of The Different Company's Sel de Vetiver; the salted beach rose of Antonia's Flowers' Tiempe Passate; the floral dunes of Lostmarc'h's Ael-Mat. Wearing any of these fragrances is an extraordinarily sensual experience.

However, I've never been a big fan of ozonic fragrances. I tried years ago to like Davidoff's Cool Water and just couldn't do it. In fact, I found this perfume extremely cold and metallic, with the metal having no welcoming aspect at all.

I can completely understand 'get' a nose's use of salt in a perfume; I can even 'get' the desire to capture the smell of ozone. I can't, however, imagine a nose ever choosing to include chlorine as a note in a fragrance.

However, I spend an hour late on Monday afternoons at the Jubilee Sports Centre in Queens Park, where my son has a weekly swimming lesson, and sitting there steeped in wafts of chlorine is actually quite enjoyable.

So, as ever, the smell of the swimming pool area got me thinking about perfume. After weeks of being the pool accompanyist, I still can't imagine this being a good addition to any scent. But, the smell is completely enervating combined with the heat of the pool area, which is extraordinarily pleasant.

If you read the blogs or the reviews on the Makeup Alley site, you'll find fragrances that people refer to as comfort scents: things to be worn during stressful times, to help you ease into sleep, simply because they smell of something you find soft, enveloping and easy to deal with.

I don't really 'do' comfort scents. I have used perfumes to help support confidence or build a personal space around myself, but I don't look for comfort in perfume. It simply hasn't been an attraction.

But, this enervating pool smell is wonderful. If I come into the pool area feeling stressed or irritated that pretty much disappears by the end of my son's lesson (and I don't think that is due to watching him with his very attractive swimming teacher, pony tail and all), which is a very good thing indeed, something to be appreciated. And while this isn't obviously a smell directly associated with perfumery I find it interesting overall to contemplate how fragrances in general affect us and which specific ones speak to us as individuals. So. Please don't think it strange that I find comfort in chlorine.

I Profumi di Firenze Magnolia Purpurea

I spent the past couple of days filling orders for the site, which means I've been covered in a myriad of different, sometimes clashing, fragrances as I've filled sample vials.

I haven't been wearing much scent myself over the past month, as I didn't want to associate things with the period of stress.

Now that the site is up, I can refocus on my interest in and love of perfume.

Yesterday, I put on I Profumi di Firenze's Magnolia Purpurea specifically because I'm not a huge big floral fan. I thought: let's just have a play.

Well, a very interesting 'big' floral indeed. I didn't grow up near magnolia trees and have this idea, for no good reason other than rampant imagination and a small number of southern romances read as a teenager, that the flowers have a watery aspect.

Magnolia Purpurea (which I've also seen labelled as Magnolia Dolce) started out quite lush and interestingly waxy on me. I really like the waxiness. It is unusual and gives the feel of rubbing a petal on skin.

After a bit, a honey note emerges as well as something green. These two aspects act as a strange counter-point to each other: one hot and unctious; the other fresh and light. This dichotomy is quite a surprise and it certainly drew me in further.

But the thing I find most fascinating about this fragrance is the waxiness. I kept expecting this to fall off a cliff into soapiness, as aspect of fragrance I don't enjoy at all, and thus become a simple greenish floral. But, the waxiness persists through the development of the perfume and keeps it on the right side of strange, gives it a heft that keeps the green from losing gravitas and becoming too light.

In the drydown, the waxiness becomes decidedly musky, imparting a dusky undercurrent that reminds me of hot, humid summer evenings when the sky reaches that blue which is not quite black.

All in, a reminder of the best aspects of humid summer nights. Some months ago it was quite hot here and I had a period of reviewing fragrances I hoped might work in the heart of the heated season. Well, most of those didn't, but this certainly does. This is available at my eshop and is really lovely.

A 'host' of changes

At last.

Please note that the site hosting is changing. You may well experience some blips getting here over the next fews days. Please try again later and things should be back to normal by the weekend.

Once all is finished, the opening page to www.scent-and-sensibility.co.uk will be the eshop. There are links to take you to the blog.

A few things about the shop. At present, I will only be shipping within the UK. In addition, again at present, payment will be via PayPal only. This will broaden within the next few weeks.

Once again, thank you all very much for your interest, patience, support and good wishes over the past month and a half.

Hot, but not on top: Guerlain's Mouchoir de Monsieur

Today's is a quicky post (see the post above it).

A few days ago, I had to venture into central London, to visit an auction house (more about that another time). On the way back to the bus to north-west London, I dropped into John Lewis's beauty hall for a quick test of something. It was almost Dior Poison, but I got side-tracked by the Guerlain stand.

Ended up trying the men's fragance, Mouchoir de Monsieur. So just a few thoughts on another classic men's fragrance that wipes the floor with most recently released masculines.

This came out in 1904 and is very urbane in a self-possessed way. It has a cool, contained top, underscored by by the heat of civet, patchouli and vanilla. Like an emerald, it is cool on the outside, hot on the inside.

Notes for this (per nstperfume.com) include lavender, bergamot, verbena, rose, jasmine, neroli, fern harmony (whatever that is), civet, patchouli, vanilla and iris. You can see from the notes where the hot/cold juxtaposition comes from.
 
This does not last very long on me: a few hours max. But, it's a head-turner while it's there.

Mouchoir de Monsieur comes in eau de toilette concentration in a 100ml size only. The bottle is Guerlain's wonderful spray bee. And here's a little secret for you guys out there looking to impress visitors: not only is this a wonderful masculine scent, but displayed on your dresser, this will get you loads of kudos from discerning acquaintances.

By Kilian: A Taste of Heaven

Sometimes the name of a perfume hooks you in. That was certainly the case for me with By Kilian's A Taste of Heaven. I'm a sucker for this sort of almost overblown romanticism, which seems to imply something ethereal and something carnal at the same time.

In any case, this is meant to recreate the smell of absinthe, which made me curious, so I got a sample. I tried it as soon as it arrived and dismissed it immediately: this definitely wasn't my kind of thing. I expect I planned to review it but got distracted by it not being what I had anticipated.

Well, now I am posting on it.

When I put this on a couple of nights ago, my son said, "What is that good smell?" I stuck my wrist under his nose and got an "ummmm" in response, which he meant to be positive.

I sniffed my wrist again and then became occupied with evening things. I didn't clock it again until I was in bed, at which point I thought to myself, 'something smells wrong' and then worked out it was A Taste of Heaven.

My bedroom smells are reasonably restful. This. Is. Not. On me, this is just way too much something metallic-minty and it tips into something a bit unhinging: too cool and bracing; too image of a lot of muscle. But the notes throw me for a loop: orange blossom, Turkish rose, patchouli, oakmoss, lavender and Bourbon vanilla. I think my chemistry was pulling out the lavender and oakmoss -- a very cold lavender indeed. Forbidding, in fact.

That was the top, at least, and all I recalled of it before falling asleep.

A miracle, then, that I decided to try it again the next day. It gets better.

It did indeed start out with that cold, muscular aspect which I found so discombobulating when I was trying to calm down for sleep.

In the light of day, without that distraction, it still started out very very cold lavender-oakmoss. But... after around 45 minutes it becomes more heated and the metallic aspect of the muscles calmed... sort of.

I got a tinge of florals, but only the animalic sides of the rose and orange flower. And much more oakmoss and patchouli to balance the lavender.

This is attracting as opposed to attractive and veryveryvery masculine. In fact, this is the first fragrance I have encountered that I don't think would work on a woman. This is really meant for a man's chemistry. I'm sure lots of women will think I'm just being silly and would be happy to wear it, but this was just my reaction to it on my chemistry.

Over the day, the smell of A Taste of Heaven got better and better. The oakmoss-lavender-patchouli grouping came to the fore and just lasted and lasted.

And, every time I smelled my wrist I was reminded that this is just sooooo wrong on me. I think I'll pass my sample on to my friend Richard, on whom I think it would be absolutely devastating. I'll definitely let you know.

P-ention

Yes, the spelling is correct. It's actually a combo word my karate teacher from years ago used: patience + attention. Barked at you in the middle of class, it was meant to make you calm down, draw back and re-focus. I felt it was a very apt combining and so it is still in my vocabulary 25 years later.

The article I posted on Sunday from that day's New York Times (the smell map of New York) got me thinking of my smell memories from my time living in that city. There are loads of them, and I've alluded to some in earlier posts (eg, wet pavement early on a hot August morning).

One of my strongest memories, however, is from the years I spent studying Shotokan karate at a dojo located on Broadway at around 68th Street (I believe the dojo has now moved elsewhere). I had a great time doing this, taking class four times a week most weeks. I only stopped after an injury that made practice impossible for a fairly long period.

There are the usual odours you'd find someplace where lots of people are exerting themselves, including sweat, good and bad; perfume and cologne; and garlic and alcohol from lunch.

Other more unusual fragrances derived from our gi's (the white uniforms karateka, or practitioners, wear): proper uniforms are made from very heavy-weight cotton, are fairly stiff for many months after purchase (no matter how much you wear them), and smell of a combination of starched cotton and laundry detergent (and sometime bleach). This is a clean smell, with an undercurrent of the smell of discipline. (Much as I tried, I couldn't find a good picture of a gi to use here.)

There was also the scent of electricity, of our excitement and mental exertion, because the hour-and-a-half long classes took such focus and concentration this morphed into a strangely metallic fragrance after about half an hour. This was particularly the case on hot summer evenings: the dojo had no air conditioning.

Finally, most evenings when I was on my way home after a class I would stop at Papaya King for a large papaya juice (reintroduce all the potassium I had lost -- hmmmm... maybe the potassium contributed to the metallic smell in the air). So, I associate the sweet smell of papaya with that time in my life.

All in, very strong and happy memories are associated with this melange of fragrances.

I'll return to more orthodox perfume smells on Monday.

Spam and perfume

I have been meaning to write a post about spam for a while. No, not the stuff you eat (but perhaps shouldn't -- I've given you a pic below :) ) that comes in a tin. Rather, all those rubbish emails you get for no good reason.

My personal email address seems to get cleaned out fairly well by the Kaspersky anti-virus software I bolted onto my machine. So, all I do is check the spam folder once a day to make sure nothing of interest has ended up there by accident (so far, nothing has).

It's the site email that gets hit pretty badly, even though it, too, is protected. Every time I have to get rid of the porn, insurance or younameit crap I get, I shake my head and grind my teeth. Why, oh why, can't the people who propagate this stuff do something useful with their lives? I mean, think of what all that energy would lead to thrown at something socially useful.

But what does this have to do with perfume or fragrance? you ask.

Well, hundreds of fragrances are released every year and many of them are liquid spam: pointless, ugly, uninteresting, downright annoying,  and, in some cases, sort of dangerous (I am thinking of the reviews I've read of Elizabeth Arden's Red Door and Sunflowers).  These are bottled equivalents of spam: taking up space, making it that bit more difficult to sort through and find the truly worthwhile.

I know we all have perfumes we love and perfumes we love to hate. But there are loads of fragrances that aren't well composed, are seriously banal, or where a majority of those who tried them thought they just didn't smell at all good (have a gander at reviews on the Makeup Alley website).

Lots of people complain about Thierry Mugler Angel, but the fact remains that it is beautifully put together, even if you aren't enthralled by ethylmaltol. A number of Serge Lutens compositions get very mixed reviews, but this seems to have more to do with their non-mainstream nature than to the fact that they smell bad (ie, they smell 'different' from the way mainstream fragrances smell). Many reviewers, particularly in the 18-25 age bracket, seem to view some older, classic fragrances as 'difficult'. But that doesn't mean they aren't beautiful.

I found what I think is a perfect example of fragrance spam in MUA reviews of Clean by Clean, some of which included references to this smelling of household detergent, air freshener and bug spray. It has a 24% rating, meaning less than a quarter of those who tried it actually liked what they were smelling.

One wonders if it made much money at all for the company that released it. Did they road-test it with human beings before sending it into the world? I am aware differences in body chemistry make a fragrance great on one person and terrible on another. But the negative opinion of this would imply that it does not work well on very many bodies.

We're talking here about things that are truly unpleasant and irritating: the screechy sorts of things that make you move away from someone and wonder what they were thinking when they dabbed that stuff on in the morning and to doubt their taste in all other matters.

In the end, as with spam emails, I have to shake my head in frustration: so much time, talent, imagination, energy and effort thrown away.  What a waste.