Every so often, a Now Smell This reader comments apologetically about their own taste in perfume. Usually the comment is in reference to a scent that I’ve dismissed as “pleasant but uninteresting” but that the reader adores, and the basic gist is: well, I really love this scent, but I know my tastes are lame/lowbrow/mainstream, and I haven’t had the chance to try all the swanky high-end only-sold-in-France-on-Tuesdays can’t-pronounce-the-name fragrances that the rest of you swoon over, and I’m sure I’ll grow out of this attachment to Random Cheap-o Perfume X as soon as I have. Reading such a comment, I squirm in my seat and wrinkle my brow — and all the money that I ought to have put aside for Botox, I spent on perfume.
De gustibus non est disputandum basically means ‘there is no disputing taste’. If there was no point in even discussing taste, I suppose there would be no point in perfume blogs. Most people agree that there is a point in discussing taste, in perfume as in books or music or anything else people care about. Whether bloggers and other amateurs ought to be part of the discussion is a matter of dispute, but that isn’t a dispute I mean to take on today. My point is that just as I’d not necessarily dismiss a movie because Anthony Lane* told me it was not worth the watching, I’d wouldn’t expect anybody to dismiss a perfume just because it got a less than stellar review, here or anywhere else…
