Molinard - Habanita

Powdered vetiver and vanilla that smells like a bright young thing's knickers. Quite wonderful - pearled combs, flashing eyes, a fiery red swathe of a mouth, and a kiss-me-quick beauty mark beside it.

Fendi - Theorema

Childhood gluttony, reimagined - cellars overspilling with mid-autumn cider apples, cinnamon spiced biscuits, bitter Italian sodas made from bigarade oranges, chinotto fruit, and quinine, olivine warmth. Now out of production, this is a warm, intimate fragrance for fall, for thick Norwegian fishermans' sweaters bucked with silver clasps, for bonfires made of sugared maple leaves, and for a Daisies feast of caramelised plum tartlettes, Dutch pannekoeks strewn with apples, onions, and molasses-thick stroop, and speculaas.

Santa Maria Novella - Potpourri

To embalm a saponified corpse by - evergreen smoke, eucalyptus, juniper berries, ashes. Nosecurling and assaultive when first sprayed, this later takes on the tone of catacombs, monks' robes, and funereal ironwork.

Pacifica - Sandalwood and Tibetan Mountain Temple

Sandalwood really and truly reeked of lemon Pledge, then withered and died eight minutes later. Did someone mislabel bottles?
Meanwhile, TMT makes me yearn not for saffron robes and prayer wheels, but for a crackling gingerbread house with dolly mix roofing and ice cream cone firs. (Pepper-mill at first, then pepparkakor)
Munch, crunch, crumbs on apron, snowglobe.

Flirt! - Glamourazzi

Surprisingly non-offensive bakery item, and normally I am averse to patisserie in the parfumerie. Like a big shimmying tropical cream pie. OR BETTER, shimmying glittery dancing girls (Katie Price types) with pierced navels on a tropical cream pie float bedecked with pineapples, floozy pirates, and mai tais. Cheap fun!

By Kilian - Love

Don't tell me people pay $225 to smell like an Earl Grey marshmallow.

Paco Rabanne - Metal

This begins as the most evil, venomous, Zyklon-B antisept known to man, a poisonous Chartreuse-coloured wraithe capable of liquefying your eyeballs and slurping them in one gulp. Towers crumbling, X-ray vision corroding flesh and sinew, empty-craniumed pod-dwellers gestating in cocoons of steel wool and mercury - for these glorious 15 minutes I am a pure megalomaniac, skewering hearts, bitter and Furious, sing the song of the uranium-veined Siren -
(Whispers: is it dated? It's mineral crystals that phosphoresce, lanterns . . .)
Malevolence, fuming -
Snapped spinal cords and punctured innards.

Bvlgari - Jasmin Noir

Sexually active big sister to Serge Lutens' Un Bois Vanille - very little jasmine, much almond milk plushness, like the slicked-back hair of a Robert Palmer video vamp.
EDIT: amazing lasting power - the next day this is kissing cousin to Lubin Idole, ebony and mahogany richness, glossy, luxe, lickable.

Escada - Moon Sparkle

Explosion at the Lotte chewing gum factory in the middle of a sweltering Korean heatwave.