Perfume Banditry, signature scents and how to ensure a man never forgets you.

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• Fragrance and perfume and scent and such

The only reason we women wear a ‘signature scent’ is so that one day a man will smell another woman and think of us.

It needn’t be a woman of any particular significance, and in fact the man himself need not even have any form of romantic link to you, it’s simply that he is a man, and that he has identified your scent as belonging to you. Of course, if that woman is Nicole Shrezinger from the Pussycat Dolls, even better. But I’ll get to that later.

We assume an aggressive ownership of a particular fragrance so we can subtly bully others into aligning the suggestion of that scent – opulence, glamour, sexiness – with who we are. And the longer we wear that scent, the longer we expect that association to linger. Take for example, those women who boast they only wear Chanel No. 5. Consciously or not, they are announcing that by electing to wear this iconic, luxurious scent, with its extraordinary cult status and stellar celebrity fraternity, we should now attribute these sentiments with them.

It’s a wicked little art, and one few women will profess to indulging, but perfume banditry is unquestionably one of the most powerful tools a woman has in her arsenal of allure.

For what other sensorial cue can so swiftly transport a man back into thinking of you? What other sense can so easily transport anyone, full stop? It is not music, and it is not photographs, although both certainly have their own inimitable power, it is scent.

Have you ever had the violent displeasure of smelling an ex-lover’s scent on a stranger, suffering an olfactory punch in the stomach as he walks by innocently, unaware that his spraying on 2 mls of Jean Paul Gaultier at 7.52am would deliver such an emotional, physiological blow? Have you never sprayed a pillow or a car interior with Your Scent so that when your lover snatched a whiff of it in your absence he would immediately be forced to dwell on your loveliness? Have you never chosen to wear a particular scent to a particular party knowing a particular person who particularly likes that smell will be present? You have. Of course you have. It’s one of the most glorious, mischievous pleasures of being a woman.

For all of its obvious splendor and numerous qualities, perfume exists at its most potent when women harness it to force men into thinking of her. Of course, this is true when she is present and the soft flesh below her ear and above her wrist pulses with the invisible elixir, making the poor man sitting across from her dizzy with attraction, but it is when she is not present that this witchery is at its most impressive. When she is gone, provisionally or permanently, and he smells her fragrance, he will instantly plummet, tumbling unwillingly into misted-lens memories and Technicolor visuals, unable to halt the heart from reflecting upon her. And she doesn’t even need to be there. Another woman has done all the work for her. (Who said sisterhood is dead?)

It’s impressive, awe-inspiring, elegantly diabolical.

But back to Nicole. A good (male) friend of mine interviewed her yesterday and text me afterwards to tell me that he thinks she wears the same perfume as me. I was thrilled of course. Thrilled that he had been able to pinpoint what ‘my’ fragrance was, thrilled that in a fragrance wardrobe of at least 10, I still managed to claim ownership to the one indomitable scent, and thrilled that one of the hottest women in the entire universe wears ‘my’ scent. My friend has no idea what the perfume is, of course. He just recognises the familiar cocktail of tuberose and gardenia. And that’s fine. Michael Kors barely even needs a name these days, it’s so delectably, instantly identifiable. The point was that my fragrance had done its job.  And as far as perfume banditry is concerned, so had I.

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