Recently I stopped at Dubai and spent some time looking at the range of perfumes in the duty free store at the airport. All very impressive and surely perfume packaging and promotion to create aspiration is at the pinnacle of the art of marketing. With that said I have been reading the extraordinary book "Perfumes the Guide" (2008), by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez and recognised few of the names that they rate as the greatest perfumes ever made. I have noticed over the decades that the customer base actually knows very little about the product they buy. I headed back to the liquor counter where I knew I was on safer ground.

On June 19th, 2009 the New York Times published a list of the best-selling perfumes sold in department stores as of the end of 2008, according to the NPD Group. Here indeed is a chance to judge what customers buy against a rating set by Turin and Sanchez.

Their rating system is:

***** Masterpiece
**** Recommended
*** Adequate
** Disappointing
* Awful

The sales rating, the fragrance name and producer is followed by the rating of Turin and Sanchez with a few comments from the book.

1. Beautiful, Estée Lauder ****star

2. Coco Mademoiselle, Chanel, ****star

3. Light Blue, Dolce & Gabbana *star Lemon sorbet doused with rubbing alcohol, technically remarkable in that normally transient notes are made to last an oddly long time. Trouble is, you want them to go away. If you hate fragrance, you're probably on your fourth bottle.

4. Chanel No. 5, Chanel *****star

5. Cashmere Mist, Donna Karan **star Hard to say much about this salicylate accord, wan and gray.

6. Happy, Clinique ***star

7. Pleasures, Estée Lauder *****star

8. Euphoria, Calvin Klein **star Supposedly tailored to the Asian market, which likes "lighter" fragrances, this is a competent pale floral of mind-numbing dullness. Muzak for the nose.

9. Sensuous, Estée Lauder Released after book although they rate Estee Lauder highly. Not rated

10. Romance, Ralph Lauren **star A reprehensibly dull and not even pleasant soapy floral with sugary gestures, for the kind of young women who get their hair cut precisely the same as their friends and shop from the same catalogues, so even their boyfriends can't tell them apart at ten paces.

Out of a possible score of 45 our buyers have scored 28, an average grade of 62% which will not get you up the corporate ladder. You can see why I got out of the perfume store and perhaps buyers of these products will save a lot of money and feel more attractive if they buy a copy of "Perfumes the Guide".