L'Eau d'Hiver (Frédéric Malle Editions de Parfums, 2003, Jean-Claude Ellena)

As the ice winds of winter sweep across the northern hemisphere, what better way to warm up than with a spritz of warm, lustrous scent? Well, actually, there are a few, including a roaring log fire, the Slanket, and a one-way ticket to the Maldives. Still, there is something comforting about smelling warm in frosty weather, and certainly the smells of winter – cloves, mulled wine, pine needles, spiced fruit, animal fur – are among the greatest pleasures of the season.

It comes as a surprise that the perfumer who considers that he has the right to bag the name L'Eau d'Hiver – and, furthermore, to declare that it is "the first Eau Chaude" – is Jean-Claude Ellena. Ellena has churned out a few warm-spectrum smells (including L'Artisan's Ambre Extreme, and Acqua di Parma's Colonia Assoluta), but he is the master of fragile, icy freshness. His Bois Farine, for L'Artisan, is ethereal, bitter and woodsy. His Rose Poivrée, for his own Different Company, is stunningly unsweetened and piquant, almost an anti-floral. His Angéliques Sous La Pluie, also for Frédéric Malle, is one of the most peculiar and evasive scents out there, a bit like the olfactory equivalent of that odd shade of pale grey that looks vaguely powder-blue or lilac-tinged or even slightly pink or green or yellow in different lights. Admittedly, with Bigarade Concentrée, he has shown he can work up a sweat; but, just because he can, doesn't mean he wants to. Ellena makes perfumes like Dale Chihuly makes glass sculptures: delicate, intricate, precise; informed by nature, but otherworldly.

Fortunately, with L'Eau d'Hiver, he has played to his strengths. There's a hint of spice at the topnote, but it turns out to be a cool blast of angelica, backed up with iris and heliotrope. A few moments in, the flowers gradually begin to sour down, with a hint of elegant decay coming in; like three-day old water that has been used in a porcelain vase filled with irises and heliotropes, in fact. At this point, there is something distinctly rubbery going on. God knows what. If you're expecting the alleged honey note to impart any sweetness during this process, don't hold your breath. Ellena is far too subtle to pull a Miel de Bois-style overload.

And then it's gone, leaving behind it nothing but the faint sense of having recently been in a snowy garden. Possibly one with a pile of tyres in the corner. I still don't get why those are there, actually. Maybe it's the angelica.

Like all Ellena's best, L'Eau d'Hiver is complex, compelling, and intangible. What it is not, though, is an Eau Chaude. There is nothing chaude about it: this is a mysterious, dreamlike, wintry scent, but it's colder than Nicole Kidman's hands after a long, ungloved yak ride by a fjord on Christmas morning. Brrr. Pass the mulled wine.

Celebrity fragrances

What a lot of celebrities we apparently want to smell like. Liz Taylor started it all with the hugely successful White Diamonds. Now, even the likes of Courtney and Ashley Peldon, Jade Goody and Kerry Katona get in on the act. And some of these things are gigantic sellers, despite being foetid.

I had a browse in a supermarket recently and entertained myself for minutes. There's Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs's Unforgivable, a topnote of watermelon on a drydown of watermelon with a base of some more watermelon. Naomi Campbell's Sunset reminds me of Ambre Solaire. J.Lo Glow, its biscuitty clean topnote mingled with citrus and pine, smells exactly like something you’d use to clean the hobs with. (Her Miami Glow is the same, but with bubblegum.) And, as we all know, Britney Spears smells Curious. Though I'm going to embed the commercial for another of her fragrances, Fantasy, here, because it fills me with nostalgia for the bright hope that was her life in 2005:



Awww. And, er, whoops.

Creating a perfume is an art and a science, requiring enormous sophistication and taste, years of training, subtlety, maturity, talent. Which is why the only celebrity perfume you should ever buy is Celine Dion's.

Yes, this entire post is an excuse to post an Onion article from four years ago. What of it?

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.

L’Autre (Diptyque, 1973)

Mr Atrocity has ranted most excellently below about the affront to sensuality that is Tom Ford For Men. In the course of trying to create a sexxayhott smell, Mr Ford inexplicably forgot to include any ingredients reminiscent of the human body. There is an obvious reason for this, which can easily be deduced from a glance at the advert: Mr Ford does not understand the difference between sex and pornography. Poor thing. This is a bit like not understanding the difference between eating a fabulous, imaginative and perfectly-cooked four-course meal, and looking at a photograph of a tub of supermarket margarine.

For those who like their pleasures first-hand and real, L’Autre is much more the thing; perhaps the sort of thing, in fact, that Mr Ford would have created were he not scared of his own penis. Because L’Autre is actually sexy, in a real, earthy, unashamed, all-consuming way. It smells of two things: man-spice and man-sweat. It is devastatingly uncomplicated. Spray it on, and it’s cumin. (Sorry.) Heavy, heavy garam masala, cumin-centric, with hints of coriander, ginger and black pepper. And then, after about five to ten seconds, comes the first hammer-blow of pure armpit. WHOMP! Oh God. It’s wonderful. You wait and sniff again. WHOMP! Grrr. WHOMP! Again!

L’Autre is the smell of the wolfman, if the wolfman lives in Peshawar and rarely washes. It is the smell of an Afghan spice market after a long summer day, while rugged tribesmen stand guard, using their Kalashnikovs to pick their teeth. It is like dancing all night with an awesomely muscled and shirtless Bollywood superstar, and burying your nose in his furry chest hair. It is sex. Sex and curry. And sex.

The fact that such a balls-out scent is made by Diptyque, more famed for producing ludicrously overpriced though unfortunately irresistible scented candles, comes as some surprise. Still, it was 1973 when they made it, and people were still prepared to smell like people then, rather than scrubbing feverishly at their denuded pubes with chemically-synthesised watermelon.

Naturally, the Basenotes page on L’Autre is full of people writing “ZOMG WTF it smells like vindaloo and hell and a crotch!!!11 yuk man pass the Clinique Happy!!!” Most people won’t like L’Autre, but then again most people don’t like subtitled films, opera and having their steak served blue. We can safely conclude that most people are idiots. For those few who actually enjoy life’s pleasures, it is a truly luscious discovery. If you’re one of them, you may also relish a deep sniff of Serge Lutens' Santal de Mysore, which is either a rip-off or an even more perfected version of L’Autre, depending on how you feel about Christopher Sheldrake.

Habana 1791 (Mercaderes con Obrapia, Habana Vieja, Havana, Cuba)

To the scent-obsessed traveller, globetrotting presents a wealth of thrilling smell experiences. Heavy rose oils wafting out of hammams in Turkey; the glowing hum of sandalwood factories in Mysore; hot saffron bread being carted out of a Livonian bakery; a tray of rotting-meat-scented durians in an East African market; burning rainforest hardwoods in Brazil as the local peasants make way for Big Oil; the unspeakable shit-stench of the Chao Praya on a hot morning. In pursuit of the world's best and worst smells, it pays to be intrepid. Just a few weeks ago, I chased a musk deer around the proud Himalaya, attempting to get my nose in its pod. Alas, it was fleeter than I, and also turned out to be a baby cervus elaphus, disappointingly unmusky.

Imagine, then, my delight on encountering the Habana 1791 Perfumery and Museum in Cuba. I adore Cuba: it is a glorious, sensual place; just the sort of place, in fact, that promises exceptional smells. Furthermore, Havana is unexpectedly well-supplied for beautifully restored ancient pharmacies, and the Habana 1791 is a wondrous-looking palace of earthly delights. Musty old bottles line the shelves; old-fashioned diffusing and distilling equipment lies around like thumbscrews in a medieval torture chamber; special scents have been created for the likes of the Prince Bonaparte and several glamorous women of note.

There is only one problem, in fact, with Habana 1791. Everything in there smells absolutely fucking disgusting.

I began with the signature scents, which turned out to be "created in the style of these personalities", rather than "created for these personalities". Hence the Prince Bonaparte is evidently imagined by some cretinous anosmiac to have had a strong desire to smell like a market-stall knock-off of Jovan White Musk For Men. The three women's scents – courtesy would prevent me from shaming their legacies in any case, but I have indeed forgotten their names – would be much appreciated, respectively, by a woman who found J-Lo Glow just wasn't sweet and ersatz enough; by a woman with an unquenchable addiction to supermarket Battenberg cake topped with Pic'n'Mix; and by a woman who was attempting to hose down the Augean stables.

Gasping and spluttering, I moved on to the single notes, which were displayed in a variety of test tubes in a rack. "These are all naturally derived," the shop assistant told me haughtily. Yes, indeed. Naturally derived from barium, ammonia and concentrated sulphuric acid. She handed me a tube of luminous green goo. "This is natural vetiver." No, senorita, this is natural Toilet Duck. And a yellow one. "This is natural lemon." Like being drowned in Cif floor bleach. And a purple one. "This is natural lavender." Cillit Bang, I swear.

My eyes blistering, my face cracking and peeling, and my poor, delicate nasal receptors nuked, I stumbled blindly back on to the Calle Mercaderes. I should just like to note that the Wallpaper City Guide recommends you go to the Habana 1791 and have a signature scent created for yourself. Ha! Not unless you want to Tyler Brûlé your skin off with an evilly-scented liquid blowtorch.

If the CIA is reading, by the way, I think I may have found where dear old Fidel Castro is hiding his chemical weapons manufacturing plant.

The website seems to be French and under construction at the time of posting, and you shan't want it, but here it is anyway: http://www.habana1791.com/

Tom Ford For Men (Tom Ford, 2007)

Tom Ford For Men is Mr. Ford's company's first foray into the world of male perfumery. Together with knowledge of the perfume's title, the print ads (see above) suggest one of two things. One, this perfume smells of lady's undercarriage or, two, smelling of this scent will gain one access to a lady's undercarriage. Given the staggeringly nonsexual smell of the fragrance I must assume it is option two that Mr. Ford's advertising agency is attempting to persuade us is in prospect. That said, returning to the advertisement for a moment, quite who would like to spend any intimate time with a hairless, oiled up anorexic I cannot imagine, certainly no-one with a penchant for sensual delights. And perhaps that's just it, here is a perfume aimed at people who like to think of themselves as deeply sexual and sensual but actually aren't, they need to be explicitly sold a product which puts vagina and perfume in as close physical proximity as mainstream publishing will allow to get through their heads: "Oh this is the sexy one. This one will get me laid". They must lack the capacity (or interest perhaps) to smell the array of profoundly sexy smells that perfumers have created to delight our noses, summon our blood and stiffen our sinews. What kind of mind sees this advert and buys this scent I wonder? It can only be someone for whom the vapid objectification of women, the rendering of the act of sex itself in its most artificial manner combined with the removal of any passion or emotion appeals. There is no humanity, no warmth and no sensuality. I don't doubt that people exist who get their kicks from such empty idolatry but marketing to them makes me almost speechless with anger and disappointment at my fellow males.

Returning to the product itself I had personally hoped, given the photo (setting aside social and political objections for a moment), that it might smell of ladies' undercarriages but my disappointment in finding that it did not was as nothing compared to the disappointment that it did not stir the slightest twitch of excitement in my nether regions. There are so many scents competing in this perfume that it is almost as if the perfumer, unsure of what Mr. Ford wanted for his first masculine fragrance, decided to put them all in just in case. Allow me to list them for you: citrus, lemon leaf oil, bergamot, mandarin zest, basil, violet leaves, ginger, orange blossom, black pepper, tobacco leaf, grapefruit blossom, amber, cedar, patchouli, vetiver, oakmoss, leatherwood and cypriol. It is the latter that all the fuss is being made over. Mr. Ford has commented that cypriol, a root from India, is the vital ingredient that gives, "that slightly dirty, sensual, sexy smell...It's not the same as natural musk used to be, but it has a bit of something that some people would think slightly dirty...I think it's warm and sensual." I think it's insipid and weak: semi-skimmed musk at best. To be honest, to my nose the scent it recalls most is that cheap soap that Boots used to sell, the allegedly unperfumed sort that instead had a slightly soap flakes kind of pong to it, not acrid nor pine-fresh clean but still a long way from a dirty tussle in some damp sheets. This scent has no libido at all; I really can't find anything animalic in this fragrance. Actually looking back at the compendious list of ingredients, the reason I can't get any sexy animal scent is because there is indeed no sexy animal ingredient to be found. And here is where this fragrance falls apart for me given the pure sex hyperbole of the advertising.

There is nothing offensive about the perfume itself, it is quite clean and fresh smelling, there is a hint of Earl Grey in amongst the citrus and gentle spices. But musk? No sir, nary a hint. This is no perfume to widen the nostrils; it would suffice for meeting ,and not frightening, an elderly maiden aunt perhaps, but not one's paramour. The deliciously sexy Musc Ravageur from Editions de Parfums which, despite Mr. Ford's placement of musk in the past tense, is positively engorged with the stuff is described thus on their website, "No flowers, just a refined and exalted skin scent." And that's what you need to get you horny. Lemons, violets and bergamot all have their places (in a martini, the garden and Earl Grey tea for example) but it is the smell of sweat and human skin that is arousing and Tom Ford For Men lacks any sense of it.

Après L'Ondée (Guerlain, 1906)

No spice, no comestibles, no sweetness, no warmth: Après L'Ondée is a rarity and well worth getting your hands on, although that can be difficult. The parfum has been discontinued but the EDT is still available (in Europe, anyway); sadly I find this form rather weak on my skin. I still wear it but tear through the bottle at great speed.

It starts citric, giving way very quickly to cut grass, and then on to damp violets and wet earth. It's fresh and cold, and nothing like the 'Parma Violet'-style sweetness that comes with most violet scents. There's a very slight anise bitterness. It doesn't smell like anything else I wear and I only wish I didn't have to bathe myself in it quite so generously.

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.

Safran Troublant (L'Artisan Parfumeur, 2002, Olivia Giacobetti)

Throughout history, saffron has been associated with healing, and has been used to cure just about everything. Alexander the Great used saffron on his battle wounds; in ancient Persia, saffron tea was prescribed for bouts of melancholy; modern medicine uses saffron's anticarcinogenic, anti-mutagenic, immunomodulating and antioxidant-like properties. Cleopatra, wishing to make lovemaking more pleasurable, took saffron baths before encounters with men. Saffron has been used for thousands of years as a sacrifice to the gods and a dye for Buddhist monks' robes; saffron could, therefore, be called a physical, emotional, spiritual and sexual cure.

L'Artisan Parfumeur's Safran Troublant aims straight for the culinary side of saffron. Although you get quite a bit of spice in the first squirt (cinnamon, cloves and cardamom) those disappear very quickly and you're left with saffron, vanilla, cream and a little sandalwood. It's a warm, friendly, cosseting scent, like a big milky hug - highly suited to saffron's healing powers, and very akin to some kind of creamy Indian pudding with rose petals. Like many Indian puddings, it's too sweet for my tastes, but I think most people would like it: when I wore it yesterday people couldn't stop telling me how lovely I smelled.

Acqua di Parma (Acqua di Parma, 1916)

Often have I idly wondered: what, exactly, did an 18th century German smell like? I can hazard a guess: a combination of Liverwurst, Lebkuchen, Lederhosen and elaborately-greased whiskers. For some reason, the Italian Giovanni Maria Farina found himself in the German city of Köln in 1709, and apparently found the odour of the inhabitants so noxious that he had to invent Eau de Cologne to cover it up. The resulting light citrussy-herbal concoction turned out to be one of the most influential scents in the whole history of perfume.

Farina's Eau de Cologne was not original. Hungarians had hogged the market in the Middle Ages with their Eau d'Hongrie, a similar herbal fragrance with citric elements. Most Italian states had a profumeria churning out bottles of the same sort of thing, notably the Farmacia di Santa Maria Novella in Florence, which is still going strong today. Farina's genius, then, was principally in bringing sensory civilisation to soothe the savage Hun, and in turning the unlikely town of Köln into a world-famous producer of nice smells.

Farina's invention was widely imitated, but not perfected for more than two centuries. In the middle of the First World War, an unknown group of Parmense noses created the fragrance that would henceforth define the highpoint of Eaux de Cologne. With excellent chutzpah, they renamed it: Acqua di Parma. Both the Germans and the French could consider themselves to have been flicked the Vs.

Many great colognes are still available - among them, the S. Maria Novella one, and the authentic Kölnischwasser 4711. But Acqua di Parma bests the lot of them. Something about its minutely perfected combination of notes is more cosmopolitan and more seductive than anything comparable. And, crucially, it lasts much longer. A burst of fresh lemon to start is followed by a clever blend which manages to capture a sexy, laid-back, interwar complexity. The fresh middle notes of rose, lavender, rosemary and verbena don't dip too far into femininity to put off the men. And the woody base notes of vetiver, cedar and sandalwood don't veer too far into masculinity to put off the women.

Lots of the most sexy and stylish people of the twentieth century noticed how very, very good this was. Among the wearers of Acqua di Parma were Cary Grant and David Niven, Ava Gardner and Lana Turner; also Audrey Hepburn, but I don't like her so we'll draw a veil over that. The specific genius of AdP resides in the fact that it is equally sexy on a man or a woman (and, no doubt, on an intersexual). It makes everyone who wears it seem more sophisticated, richer, better-read, more widely travelled and better in bed.

I buy a bottle of this stuff every summer, and every time I spray it on I feel like I'm in a fast car being driven by a tall, dark, chiselled-featured young novelist around the Mediterreanean in the 1930s, on our way to get married in Monte Carlo just before he goes off to volunteer for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, in which he will have a hero's death when he leads Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell and a group of wild-eyed socialist peasants to stop a Nazi division from burning down an orphanage by wrestling them to the ground with his bare hands... mmm... yeah.

Be wary of the perils on your journey. The shop assistant will probably try to persuade you to buy one of AdP's alternative smells: the dodgy Lavanda, the nose-itching Iris Nobile, or one of the horrific Blu Mediterraneo collection, all of which smell like over-iced cake that has been left out in the Tuscan sun for too long. Don't be diverted. You can have the Colonia Assoluta if you really must, but you will regret any attempt to improve on the original. Because it has now been three hundred years since Farina's marketing coup, and nobody's done it better. Acqua di Parma is perfect.