And Your Perfume Wears Army Boots! The New Guide.

It must be nice to believe that your taste in anything is "definitive" that your choices are so authoritative as to be the final word on the subject.

Perhaps one can make that claim if one is a Supreme Court Justice, but even then you need the agreement of four independant colleagues before your opinion becomes definitive.

If you are an Emperor you do not need the agreement of anyone and the Emperor of Scent, Luca Turin, has written a new book, a definitive guide to fragrance, which purports to elevate his opinion to the final word on hundreds of perfumes. This Napoleon has his Jospehine in Tania Sanchez, his new wife, with whom he shared the task of rating these fragrances, but the book was probably published due to the Emperors's reputation not hers.

The first part of the book starts out well enough with a history of fragrance and some short essays on various aspects of perfumery. The Emperor's writing is informative and a joy to read. Fine and dandy.

Then we get to the Michelin section of the book, an alphabetical listing of fragrances, a one to five star rating, and a TS or LT "review". Unlike Michelin which includes establishments that are deemed very good to exceptional, the Turin/Sanchez guide opts to sink to the level of an internet bash board and savage everything they do not like as "air freshener", "wet dog" or some other pejorative.

The authors have appeared on the blogs to describe their work as essentially a starting point for discussion on the merits of fragrances and probably to inhibit criticism of their own work. (Many of the boards treat celebrity posters as saints who are exempt from the scathing critiques they themselves dish out. Having an author post on your board or blog lends cache to your site so chasing them away or criticising them is frowned upon. Some say that criticising authors who appear for the sole purpose of defending their work is "being mean to one of our members", but this rings false and I do not see Guerlain, Montale and Caron sending posters to the blogs in order to shield their work from criticism. Maybe they should. The bloggers are easily starstruck)

Anyway let's look at the discussion aspect for a moment. If someone says "your taste sucks" how likely are you to have a pleasant and fruitful conversation with this person? If you are equally rude, you will yell back. If you are a passive sort of person you will skulk off and wear your Tabac Blond in private. If you are a psychiatrist you might delve into the motivation behind the need to score points at another's expense and examine the hostility behind such wit. In an inpatient setting you might even write an order so that the nurse can toss a mood stabilizer or some inderal in with the HS meds.

Michelin steers clear of scratching the eyes out of restauranteurs whose product is not "very good". The Turin/Sanchez guide shows why Michelin has been around for over a century. Michelin knows the difference between constructive criticism and wisecracks. By including only the better establishments it can give the mediocre something to aim for without devastating them. The LT/TS approach is mean spirited.

Apparently, despite the frequent snide reviews, this was a "pay to play" effort and perfume houses had to pony up bottles of fragrance in order to be included in the roast. I don't see why they bothered. There are so many blogs and boards out there who will provide more thoughtful reviews without this expense, small though it may have been. Many houses obviously provided Turin and Sanchez with the requested materials, others did not and were excluded. Smart move Montale.

On Perfume of Life's message board a poster referred to the Turin/Sanchez guide as porn. Porn allows you to take vicarious pleasure at watching someone else get screwed. This poster was right on the money. Not my taste at all.