Bond No. 9 boutique, 9 Bond Street, New York

There are a lot of clichés about American perfumery. Americans like to smell clean, while everyone else in the world likes to smell dirty; American perfumes are all about things you can eat, mostly fruit but occasionally coffee, chocolate or cake; the United States produces a lot of smells, but has yet to produce a truly great fragrance house. Bond No. 9 aims to challenge all of these.

But does it succeed?

Hmm.

I spent a long time in the flagship store, fighting off some supercilious assistants, all armed with that overtrained, po-faced, robotic sales patter that some American corporations seem to think the customer would like more than talking to an actual responsive human with a personality, a sense of humour and some opinions.

Bodes badly, right?

Right.

I see the Bon-Bon Box (above) in the window, What a lovely thing! How shiny! Lots of little smells, beautifully packaged! An ideal gift for Violet, Beverly or Mr Atrocity! I sally forth to the testing counter to poke my nose into their business.

Chinatown is supposed to be Bond's truly great scent, so that's where I start. And, yes, it's good. A complex, intelligent peach'n'patchouli oriental that manages to be elegant and pleasing at every stage. But that's it. Pleasing. I am pleased. There's nothing about Chinatown that challenges or surprises me. It is chic and polished, and as it progresses goes through a formal, controlled, unobjectionable sequence. It's a lot like the sales assistants.

It's good, all right? And there's something alluring about perfect poise. But I can't find it in my heart - or, for that matter, my nose - to love something so very orderly. So very safe.

Next I try Andy Warhol Silver Factory, one of a range inspired by the artist. Again, it's good. A smart, careful balancing of Warhol's favourite smells: violet, incense and woods. It dries down to something nice. It is nice. I am pleased. I might be even more pleased than I was with Chinatown. And yet my heart rate is unchanged.

I look bored. "This is our bestseller," monotones the assistant, spraying me with a cloud of something purple called The Scent of Peace. Horrific name, and horrific... at last! Something that produces a reaction! Unfortunately, that reaction is sneezing, because I'm being drowned in grapefruit! Look, if I wanted to smell like The Body Shop, I wouldn't have to spend $130 on a bottle. And that's the small size. (They vary. Silver Factory comes in at a whopping $230.)

I plead for something less like bath gel, and a succession of spicies is paraded in front of me: Nuits de Noho (vanilla/patchouli), Great Jones (cedar), Wall Street (lavender/vetiver), HOT Always (cinnamon/bergamot). They're all fine. Great Jones is very fine. I sniff it again. Yes, very fine. I am pleased.

It's very hard to object to any of them. Except they're so... thin. There's no body, no sensuousness, no emotion.

Tom Wolfe, in that quintessential New York novel Bonfire of the Vanities, describes a certain type of socialite women. These women are ageing but heavily into artificial preservation, rail-thin, perfectly blowdried and manicured: simultaneously satirising their appearance and their brittle vapidity, he calls them "social X-rays".

I bet the social X-rays love Bond No. 9.

I stumbled back on to the street, outwardly pleased but inwardly disappointed, my wallet no lighter. Bond No. 9 makes a very tasteful range of well-produced scents. If you wear one (pretty much any one, apart from that horrible Peace thing), you will project an aura of immaculate luxury, and you won't offend anyone.

That's just not what I'm after in a perfume. But, then again, I am a European.

French Lover (known as Bois d'Orage in the US; Frédéric Malle Editions de Parfums, 2007, Pierre Bourdon)

For some reason, the name 'French Lover' made me assume this scent was floral. Now I think about it, I can't imagine why I would have made that assumption. I can only guess that my mind went Lover -> Love -> Romance -> Roses. This Chypre fragrance is a very long way from that.

French Lover undergoes a bizarre and unexpected transformation as it dries down, which takes hours. The first rush is iris and cedar, very bitter and resonant of L'Artisan Parfumeur's Méchant Loup. It's strong and masculine and woody and it lasts for an hour or two, mellowing a little, before taking a strange turn into soft, warm amber, and crystalline-sweet benzoin, like vanilla and church incense. It takes the whole day to change over from one to the other and it lifts my spirits as it does so, moving from fiery, enthusiastic energy to safe, comforting smoky warmth, directly counteracting the increase in my stress levels during a day at work.

(As an aside, why did they feel the need to call this scent 'Bois d'Orage' in the US? Is it the same thing as 'Freedom Fries' - they've decided the word 'French' is bad because they don't like French people? If so, do they really think that it's better to go from the name being French to the name being in French? What difference does that make? Or is it the word 'Lover' to which they object, because sex is an affront to American values or something?)

What a magical and fascinating fragrance this is, with its extraordinary masculine-to-feminine path. I'd have called it French Lovers. And I'll be getting another bottle after this one, I can tell.

Querelle (Parfumerie Generale, Pierre Guillaume)

There is much talk online about Querelle being weird and desolate and miserable and surprising and challenging. Maybe it's my skin, but I don't smell any of these things. I get myrrh (a huge hit), vetiver (an almost equally huge hit) and amber (a subtler hit). I also get something which smells a bit like celery seed to me, and a quick look at the ingredients tells me it's probably the contribution of Iranian black caraway.

Desolate? Challenging? Not at all. All warm and earthy and sensual. Personally, though, I love myrrh and vetiver so much that I was bound to love it. Annoyingly, though, Querelle is part of the Parfumerie Generale 'Private Collection' which is produced in strictly limited editions, with, apparently, 'only a few dozen bottles available each year'. How many, one wonders, is a few? If I fall in love with this scent, am I going to be unable to buy more in the future? I find these enforced limitations elitist and frustrating - the only downside to this marvellous fragrance.

Tea for Two (L'Artisan Parfumeur, 2000, Olivia Giacobetti)

When I squirted myself with Tea for Two this morning, I wasn't impressed. Smoky to the point of caustic, like standing next to roadworks. I thought I'd made a dreadful mistake putting it on, but, over the next few hours, the fragrance matured and Olivia Giacobetti once again proved her worth. I can smell cloves and nutmeg, honey and cinnamon. I can smell the deep smoke of lapsang souchong and the delicate bergamot of Earl Grey, as well as the honey spice of Indian chai and a touch of orange blossom.

This is a deep, dark, sensual smell, and I love it. I might even love it more than Dzing! although that's a little like trying to choose your favourite child.

Alamut (Lorenzo Villoresi, 2006)

Rose, incense, patchouli, amber, tuberose, ylang-ylang, neroli.

I find a lot of incense-based fragrances too sweet for my tastes; I've been looking for an exception for quite a while. I have found it in Alamut, which is such a wonderful smell that, in spite of the fact that I only discovered it two days ago, ranks among my favourite fragrances of all time.

On my skin, the initial neroli and tuberose give way quickly to incense, powdery lavender and sandalwood, which are the strongest notes I get from this scent. However, as with Cuir Ottoman (below), the quality that raises this one from good to extraordinary is that the impression I have is not that my skin is wearing an incense fragrance, but that my skin itself smells of incense. My assumption is that this wouldn't be the case with everybody, and that it's a quality of my own body chemistry, but the effect is subtle, sensual and remarkable. My skin smells of lavender talc and Nag Champa.

If I had to choose one 'desert island' perfume, one to wear every single day, Alamut would be a very strong contender. Unlike some of my other favourites, it is a gentle, warm, subtle smell - but no less stunning for it.