What Do the Stars Mean to Me?

***** (Out of *****) (Plus a few additional categories…)

I am such a huge dork. I know it—I don’t try to hide it. I resist developing all-enveloping crushes on things because I know how I get, but I have fallen hard for perfume, and it brings out all of my nerd qualities in full display.

Like the need I feel to rank everything. Give it a category, understand it in relation to other perfumes of its type, understand it in the context of perfume’s history. Do I like Frederic Malle’s “Musc Ravageur” more or less than Serge Lutens’ “Chergui?” And can I truly compare either to Malle’s “Bigarade?” Two are from the house of Malle, but “Bigarade” is a cool, astringent citrus, where the other two are warm musks. “Musc Ravageur” is more difficult, but its drydown is more magical. “Chergui” doesn’t make me think so hard—is blander really better? Better question yet, all three are distinctly masculine—when will I ever even wear them, except when I’m dressing up in drag?

Nerd-girl, you need to breathe deeply into a paper bag.

But seriously, thinking about how I like perfume, and how much is something that I spend a lot of time on when I’m trying something out. I find perfume to be so stimulating, and yet maddening, elusive, all-encompassing—I need some guidelines to understand my own reactions.

So here is how I rank perfume. Let’s start with the top score:

***** (Out of *****) This perfume must be truly transcendent. On first smelling it, there must be an “Oh, my God” moment, when you encounter something you never known before, but you are truly changed forever: from now on, this scent will be a part of you, and you cannot live without it. There must be no flaws, no rough periods, no weirdnesses. I can imagine giving a perfume a five-star rating without super staying power (grudgingly), but it would have to be stable (remain mostly unchanged after the first 5-10 minutes or so).

**** Fabulous. Four-stars must be flawless at every stage, distinctive (have a strong point of view), and stay smelling nice on skin for hours. A four-star may be an avatar of a class of scents. (“This is the very best _____________ I know” (Fill in chypre, floral, aldehyde, musk, etc.)) They should be accessible enough to say even to someone who really distrusts perfume, “Just try smelling a little of this one.” If the definition of a “classic” in art is something that makes you feel the same thing every time you encounter it, four-stars must have classic appeal. (In contrast to being historically famous. Jean Patou’s “Joy” is classic in both senses of the word.)

*** Yum. Three-stars must make me say “Yum” involuntarily, out loud.

I save a three-star rating for those slightly off-beat winners that take a little work to love. If I have to ask the question “Do I feel like __________ today?”, it cannot be a four-star. It can be a very lovely three-star, however. My three-star perfumes tend to have one thing in them that is just a little bit too much—a little too sharp, a little too sweet, a little too this, a little too that. Oh, so good, but just it needs a tiny tweak.

A three-star may be a fragrance that captures a specific mood, like it might be the scent you want to wear when doing yoga, or going to a movie premiere, or having sex, or comforting yourself when you are sad, or going to a job interview, or strangling your lover, or mowing the lawn.

Three-stars must also pass one other important test: they must be something that I can honestly say “I know I will want to wear that at some point in the next twelve months.” That can be a killer. Especially as I spend time smelling more and more perfumes, a lot of good juice gets kicked down from three stars to two. A lot of three-stars are ones that I want to share with my more adventurous friends.

** I have two categories of two-stars: one category consists of yummy scents that die after 20 minutes on me. I have to say, I hate those the most. The ones that tantalize and get me all fired up, and then, after a few minutes, I’m sniffing around like my dog digging out biscuits in the sofa cushions trying to find it. What a tease!

The other two-star designation consists of even yummier fragrances that go through, if I can say it nicely, “difficult” phases. A perfume can still be two-stars even if there are times when I scrunch up my nose and think “What is going on here?” as long as there are passages of fabulous beauty. I call them “weird but worth it.” “Weird but worth it” perfumes are sometimes the ones I like the best, because I just keep reapplying them, trying to figure them out. Is it something funky about my chemistry? Was that effect intentional? What DOES that smell like? And sometimes these are the ones where I say “I can tell where the hit would be from here, but this is, sadly, just a miss.”

* One-star means either I don’t like it—nothing personal, just not my style, or that it is derivative. If I ask myself, why would I wear this, rather than ____________ (fill in the blank), it’s most likely a one-star. If it is blurry or ill-defined, it’s a one-star. If I ask myself, what is this trying to convey, where is the point of view, it’s a one-star. It may be somebody else’s favorite thing ever, but it just doesn’t grab me. Eh.

0 (No stars) This is for scents that are so horrible, I cannot bear to think of them touching my skin. As in, do not open the bottle. Keep it away from me.

Bomb (No rating) A lot of fine perfume goes on me to die. As soon as it touches my skin, it “blows up.” The most common explosions on me tend to be what I call “car bomb” smells, such as burning rubber, burning plastic, or hot metal. All bad. I’ve had other funny reactions, too numerous to mention—smell of rancid mouse nest is one; being sniffed incessantly for two hours by my dog is another. I take it in stride. There are plenty of good smells in the world to try without getting hung up on the ones that go horribly wrong. I am curious about smelling them on other people though. Guerlain’s “Shalimar” goes straight to car bomb on me, and it’s been an international best-seller for more than 80 years now. I’d like to smell it on somebody else…

Classic (No rating) There are a handful of scents that are such touchstones that they defy categorization—Chanel “No. 5”, (nicknamed “Le Monstre,”) is the perfect example. How do you rate scents that are so seminal—could you ever really come to them with a fresh nose? Trying to imagine it, I’d probably give “No. 5” a “weird-but-worth-it” two stars—what gives with all the over-the-top powder? But I can’t really rate it.

I throw up my hands at a lot of French mid-to-late-20th century greatest hits (and their American counterparts)—they’re huge, they’re flawless, they’ve got florals and powders and musks in equal measure. I see the Eiffel Tower in my mind. But do I wear that stuff, ever? No, I really don’t. Does “L’Air du Temps” evoke a wildly different reaction in me than “24 Foubourg,” than “White Shoulders”? Not really. Big, white, fancy florals. I know that makes me a luddite. But I’m much more interested in contrasts and magical combinations. I like to have to think a little bit when I smell something, have it conjure something I hadn’t thought of before.

Final note on the star rating system: I only ever round down. That sometimes makes it tough—my husband thinks I should have pluses and minuses (“a two-star plus”) system. Then it gets to be like the grade you got in high school. But it’s too many categories—the whole reason I got started ranking perfumes in the first place for myself was to do some weeding out—there are tens of thousands of perfumes in the world—I hope to smell at least a few thousand of them before I die. If something is good enough to reach for it again and again, over all the other pretty smelly waters out there, then it needs to earn it. Otherwise, move on!