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Is your fragrance in the Top 10?

Mar. 27--Until recently, most writing about perfume was in the form of advertising copy: highly subjective, intentionally vague and about as flowery as a flacon-covered fragrance counter.

Dallas Morning News, The (KRT) via NewsEdge Corporation :

But a growing number of obsessed amateurs and scholarly pros have begun to treat fragrance with the same respect and serious consideration given to other popular arts. If a fashion collection, movie or bottle of wine can be critically assessed -- and enjoyed all the more for the discussion -- why can't a bottle of perfume? Some of the liveliest dialogue takes place on the Web, where message boards and sites such as perfumesmellinthings.blogspot.com and basenotes.net provide a forum for enthusiasts to seek out discontinued favorites, and debate the relative merits of this or that fragrance.

"Half of what I know I owe to the twenty-four-hour-a-day pajama party that is the fragrance board of Makeup Alley (makeupalley.com)," writes Tania Sanchez in the introduction to Perfumes: The Guide (Viking, $27.95). The book, co-authored with Luca Turin and scheduled for release this month, is a critical assessment of over 1,000 current and classic fragrances, from A La Nuit ("death by jasmine") to Zoe ("Honestly, just wear Joy").

After spending the better part of a weekend reading a galley -- often aloud to anyone willing to listen -- I'm convinced Turin and Sanchez offer some of the most stylish, erudite and hilarious criticism in any subject field.

Think a perfume can't be captured in words? Or that "writing about perfume is like dancing about architecture," as the founders of Le Labo fragrances told Turin and Sanchez? Prepare to be proven wrong.

Here's Sanchez on Bond No. 9's H.O.T. Always:

Patchouli fragrances

"For unfortunate cultural reasons, big patchouli fragrances have to overcome the ever present insinuation that the wearer is either (1) a user of bongs, or (2) covering up what the British call pongs -- strong stinks. Therefore, fragrances that feature patchouli prominently such as L'Artisan's Patchouli Patch or Gap's Om, tend to go subtle and emphasize the material's clean, natural outdoors smell -- haystacks, not head shops. H.O.T. Always is far from this kind of subtle, but neither does it make you think automatically of stoned kids on Haight. Instead, it smells like a massive dose of camphor plus freshly overturned earth, and hits you with an invigorating, sinus-clearing whomp. ... Terrific gutsy stuff, lots of fun, and totally impossible to wear politely."

And savor this description of Frederic Malle's Outrageous! by Chandler Burr, a freelance journalist who's penned two books on fragrance (his first, The Emperor of Scent, features Turin as its subject), and now holds the title perfume critic for the New York Times, where he rates scents using a star system in the paper's T magazine.

"It is, in fact, the smell of Tang (the powder), sprinkled on a plate of polyurethane (the stuff of gel pads and condoms), on which sit grapes, apples and pears made of polyvinyl chloride. Nearby are brushed aluminum, electrical wiring and a canister of kerosene. The kerosene adds an ingenious note of alarm to the soft dystopian olfactory glow."

Rating by your wallet or your nose?

Though clearly connoisseurs, the authors are far from nose-sniffing snobs. A cheaply packaged celebrity scent may earn five stars, while an offering from a status name like Hermes, Guerlain or Chanel gets just one or two.

"Despite all the historical evidence to the contrary (Brut, Canoe, Habanita, and the first J-Lo)," writes Turin in his 5-star laud of Tommy Hilfiger's $38 Tommy Girl, "the world is still crawling with naive snobs who'd rather believe their wallet's loss than their nose's gain."

Turin, a biophysicist turned "olfactory scholar and theorist," wrote the first perfume guide in 1992, in French. His scientific work on scent theory -- far too esoteric for summary here -- was the subject of a popular BBC documentary, and also of his 2006 book The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell (Harper Collins, $23.95). He now holds the title technology chief at Flexitral, a company he founded to develop scent and flavor molecules.

Are cheaper ingredients worth it?

On one point, all of the critics seem to agree: The rush to introduce new perfumes -- more than 500 a year -- and the economic efficiencies of using cheaper ingredients have not had a positive effect.

Turin's musical analogy is to a "shift from symphony to jingle" and "getting dangerously close to ring tone: inventive, often distinctive, catchy even, but with lousy sound quality."

One bright note is the rise of niche fragrance firms such as Bond No. 9, Miller Harris, Frederic Malle, S-Perfume and Serge Lutens. These and dozens of other indie labels offer talented perfumers creative freedom, and position their scents as boutique alternatives to the commercial "juices" churned out by the big guys.

For all the picks and pans, the overwhelming message is that perfume is worth loving -- a day brightener, mood lifter and affordable luxury that adds a measure of beauty to our lives.

Now, who could argue with that?

THE TOP TEN

As rated and briefly characterized in Perfumes: The Guide

Best Feminines

-- Angel (Thierry Mugler) -- fruity patchouli

-- Apres l'Ondee (Guerlain) -- heavenly heliotrope

-- Black (Bulgari) -- hot rubber

-- Bois de Violette (Serge Lutens) -- woody oriental

-- L'Heure Bleue (Guerlain) --

-- Joy parfum (Patou) -- symphonic floral

-- No. 5 parfum (Chanel) -- powdery floral

-- Mitsouko (Guerlain) -- reference chypre