Heresy

One still sees young ladies scuttling around the perfume halls of Liberty or Selfridges with Perfumes: The Guide propped open in one hand, the other wrist clutched to nose, frowning, smiling, or mentally justifying a £200 purchase.  Luca Turin, the enormously gifted Emperor of Scent, along with his default Empress, have done more for fragrance appreciation in recent years than any writer, blogger or even perfumer could.

Turin's humour, good taste and wonderfully imperious grandstanding not only make for an enormously entertaining read, his expertise and insights are incredibly educational.  Actually, never mind his imperious dictates, Turin has seemingly been placed at the head of the Church of scent appreciation.  His words are gospel.

So, it is with trepidation that anybody disagrees, especially when his five star reviews are so illuminating, explaining the greatness of certain scents in such a beautiful, artful manner or introducing the enthusiast to some unexperienced wonder (like Parfum de Nicolaï's amazing New York).  But on one particular review I must disagree, trepidatiously but wholeheartedly.

Turin gives Estée Lauder's Beyond Paradise Men five stars.  He says that it "works like music more than fragrance... All other masculines (and most feminines) seem loud, course and bare by comparison."  WHAT?

I may have nowhere near the skill and experience of Monsieur Turin but are we really smelling the same scent here?!  Beyond Paradise Men is simply awful.  It's one of those bog-standard aquatic monstrosities, cynical and bland, designed to be as inoffensive to sheep-minded consumers as possible.  It's so basic and boring: the best I can say about it is the bottle's OK and that the ghastly melon / cucumber accord doesn't shout as loudly as it might.

Perhaps I shan't go to scent heaven, or indeed beyond perfume paradise for saying so, but Turin demeans the rest of his wonderful writing and analyses with this bizarre hyperbole.

Now I'm off to say five Hail Jickys and two L'Air du Temps, just in case.

          [By ANDREW]