His and Hers: El Mono de la Tinta and La Cautiva by Fueguia 1833

There are 18 scents in the Fueguia 1833 collection, and I am not going to spin them out over 18 weeks, so after last week's starter we'll probably just have them in twos and threes instead.

El Mono de la Tinta, "The Ink Monkey", is named for a Borges story about a creature that haunts writers and drinks from their inkwells. It doesn't smell like ink: it smells like a Comme des Garçons scent, for better or worse. My initial reaction was, "Ugh — what the hell is that? It smells like urine. Worse. Fermented urine." Once the human-filth aspect has burned away — and it does, in a few minutes – a dark cedar-and-sandalwood quality is revealed and the whole thing settles down to a dry, austere, spicy wood scent, masculine and bafflingly sexy, a Cistercian monk with a close-cropped beard and bedroom eyes. I'd wear it: I'd just put a clothespin on my nose for ten minutes or so.

La Cautiva, "The Captive", knows how to make a good first impression: it starts off with an immensely cheerful blast of tart blackcurrant and sugary vanilla. It's basically a huge mass of fruity cotton candy. It is charming and bright and huge. But then it just keeps being this never-ending cloud of tart-sweet, almost a parody of modern drugstore perfumery for young women, and the pleasure starts to wear thin. There's no development at all: it just deflates, eventually. It's so single-minded and ultimately boring that I don't believe for an instant anyone could wear this repeatedly and not get tired of it, which is bad enough, but that it costs what it does ($150 for 30 mL, $240 for 100 mL) is borderline criminal.

The Judgement of Paris: What We Do In Paris Is Secret by A Lab On Fire

What We Do In Paris Is Secret is a tantalizing name, no doubt about it, as is A Lab On Fire, the house that launched it last year. They're not cranking out dozens of scents annually, for which they get credit: instead, they're hiring name perfumers — Sophia Grojsman, Thierry Wasser — to produce high-end fragrances (currently $110 for a 60-mL bottle) and apparently limiting themselves to three a year, which these days is an extraordinary show of restraint.

What We Do In Paris Is Secret was created by Dominique Ropion, who is also responsible for the literally flawless Casual Friday, cruelly discontinued (I have a big bottle which should last me years), and the baffling but much-loved Kenzo Jungle L'Elephant, as well as a number of other scents you may of heard of: Ysatis and Amarige for Givenchy, Mugler's Alien, and Dior Pure Poison, to name a few.

In the last twenty years, the dominant expression of fragrance for women has been the fruity floral, and presumably as a consequence of this, most of Ropion's assignments, no different from any other perfumer's, have been in this genre, which explains why he has had a hand in such popular unpleasantnesses as Gucci Accenti, Calvin Klein Euphoria, Very Irresistible by Givenchy, Paco Rabanne's Lady Million, and others it is best not to think too hard about. What We Do In Paris is a Secret is a heavy, sweet, cloying, chemical fruity floral as obnoxious as any I've ever smelled. With its radioactively pinging top note and its thick, mucky middle, it is horrible: just bringing the vial near my nose makes me wince. It's so dreadful that twenty minutes after putting in on the backs my hands (as I always do), I had to scrub it off. I could still smell it, so I scrubbed my hands again a few minutes later. Even then I couldn't stand the remnants of it, so I scrubbed a third time. I was finally reduced to spraying myself with CSP Vanille Abricot, something potent, something with covering power. A lot of people commenting on Luckyscent and Fragrantica just adore it, so go ahead, listen to them. But for the love of god, get a sample first, and try it out near soap and running water.