Spray Misty For Me

The most fun book of the year (if you're into that sort of thing) has got to be Perfumes: The Guide, in which Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez take on the titans of the perfume industry with reviews of the current crop of fragrances that tend to be of the scathing variety (but also some that are positively glowing). To wit, a few, mmmm....samples:

• "I believe there's a handsoap in a certain airline's lavatories that smells exactly like this." (The Blanc)
• "Vile, yes, but somebody in a jeweled cardigan has been waiting for it all her life." (Nanette Lepore)
• "So overwhelmingly cute that I think it would only work properly on a Clint Eastwood lone-avenger type, chewing cud and asking, "Who you calling sweet, punk?" in a hissy voice." (Fairytales)
• "..this simple, cheap composition should be called something like Powder Fresh and should stop perspiration for twelve hours." (Park Avenue)
• "I lived in Provence for eight years and mercifully never encountered this extraordinary accord of cheap gin-and-tonic and wet concrete." (Clean Provence)