Lovely (Sarah Jessica Parker) * * * * cute floral
If logic applied, celebrity frangrances (i.e., projects that add an extra layer of exploitative cynicism on top of an already mountainous heap of contempt for the consumer) should be reliably awful. Many have turned out really good instead, suggesting that the gods of perfumery enjoy a little joke. Pavarotti for men was ace, the first J-Lo was presentable, Naomi Campbell was just fine. Now Lovely comes along. Naturally, I approached it with the proper furrowed brow of the critic-not-about-to-be-taken-in-by-nonsense. Five seconds later, I was like Solly in Monsters, Inc., clutching little Boo to his hirsute breast. This is a truly charming floral, about as edgy as a marshmallow and all the better for it, with a fresh, gracious, melodic chord somewhere between lily of the valley and magnolia, which cascades down like the tune of a music box while you sit there transfixed by the intrinsic goodness of nice girls dressed in white. Makes you want to buy furry toys. LT

Eternity for Men (Calvin Klein) * * * mandarin lavender
An interesting twist on the perennially pleasant citrus-lavender accord using the (musically speaking) flattened note of mandarin rather than straight citrus, or the corresponding sharp of lime. This is a very skillfully composed and likable fragrance, but I wish more cash had been spent on the formula. It smells good but cheap, which would be fine if the overall structure were unpretentious as in Cool Water, whereas it is distinctly aspirational. LT

Juicy Couture (Juicy Couture) * * * * tuberose floral
Far classier than the wonderfully trashy packaging would lead one to suppose, this is a nicely crafted floral incorporating that rare thing, a delicate, transparent tuberose. Clearly inspired by abstract florals in the manner of Beyond Paradise, but one of the best in the genre. LT

Tommy Girl (Tommy Hilfiger) * * * * * tea floral
No fragrance in recent memory has suffered more from being affordable than Tommy Girl. It’s as if it were deemed less desirable for being promiscuous. Despite all the historical evidence to the contrary (Brut, Canoe, Habanita, and the first J-Lo), the world is still crawling with naïve snobs who’d rather believe their wallet’s loss than their nose’s gain. Tommy Girl’s origins were explained to me by creator Calice Becker, who was brought up in a Russian household, with a samovar always on the boil and a mother with a passion for strange teas. At Becker’s instigation, the legendary chemist Roman Kaiser of Givaudan sampled the air in the Mariage Frères tea store in Paris to figure out what gave it its unique fragrance. From this a tea base was evolved, in which no one showed much interest. The idea waited several years until Elléna’s excellent but only remotely tea-like Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert (Bulgari) came out in 1993. Its success made it possible for Becker to submit a tea composition for the Hilfiger brief. She won it, eleven hundred formulations later the perfume was finalized, in collaboration with a brilliant evaluator who went on to study philosophy. Tea makes excellent sense as a perfumery base, since it can be declined in dozens of ways, as flavored teas will attest: Soochong, Earl Grey, jasmine, and so on. In that respect it could serve as a modern chypre, a mannequin to be dressed at will. Tommy Girl clothed it in a torero’s trafe de luces, a fresh floral accord so exhilaratingly bright that it could be used to set the white point for all future fragrances. Remarkably, late in the project, Hilfiger’s PR firm asked Becker to give them so e reason to label the fragrance as typically American. Quest’s resident botany expert was called in, and to everyone’s surprise found that the composition fell neatly into several blocks, each apparently typical of a native American botanical. So it goes with projects whose sails are filled by the breath of angels. LT

The composition miraculously turned out to fall into accords typical of native American botanicals? Put me on record as skeptical. Tommy Girl smells great, though, and has been copied relentlessly. TS

Beauty Rush Appletini (Victoria's Secret) * Jolly Rancher
Victoria's Secret has determined that its customers need (1) cleavage and (2) to smell precisely like dime-store candy. You may discern an implicit insult to the male mind in this pair of facts. TS

“While the authors embrace point systems and science, they also offer vivid, funny, evocative descriptions of the smells they write about…To enjoy Perfumes, you don’t need to know, or even to like, perfumes, such is the brio of Turin’s and Sanchez’s prose…This is fun to read – and a rare pleasure, too…The joy of Turin and Sanchez’s book, however, is their ability to write about smell in a way that manages to combine the science of the subject with the vocabulary of scent in witty, vivid descriptions of what these smells are like. Their work is, quite simply, ravishingly entertaining, and it passes the high test that their praise is even more compelling than their criticism…Its blend of technical knowledge and evocative writing is exemplary in the strict sense: people who write about smell and taste in any context should use it as an example.”
-The New Yorker

“This comprehensive book is unfailingly entertaining…Their passion for a few scents and their outrage at the others’ failings make for entry after entry of hilarious, catty comments interspersed with occasional erudite, eloquent disquisitions…This will be a must-have for anyone who already loves perfumes…and those who aren’t utterly perfume-obsessed will still appreciate the opening essays on olfactory science, the history of perfume, general types of fragrances and how to choose perfumes.”
-Publishers Weekly, starred review

“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.”
-Dallas Morning News

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