It’s been hot here. It’s pushing 100 degrees, and like most people in my neighborhood I don’t have an air conditioner. When night comes, neighbors sit in boxer shorts under their porch lights drinking cold, cheap beer and swatting mosquitoes. Even feral cats move slowly. What’s a girl to do? Descend to the basement with a martini and a stack of film noir DVDs, that’s what. Here in the light of an old swag lamp with the chest freezer kicking in now and then I immerse myself in the black and white world of femme fatales, private eyes, and gangsters. And of course I think, what perfume would they wear?

Let’s start with something easy: the femme fatale. Think of Ava Gardner as Kitty Collins in The Killers. She’s beautiful, unattainable, and just when you think she’s yours she double crosses you. Frédéric Malle Carnal Flower and Robert Piguet Fracas come to mind right away. Lanvin My Sin or Caron Narcisse Noir might be good choices, too. The “corrupt flower” of Penhaligon’s Amaranthine would be a good bet when the femme fatale is settled in a humid, exotic location like Jane Russell in Macao or Bette Davis in The Letter. Rita Hayworth in Gilda is more of a Guerlain Shalimar…

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Ten years ago it would have been impossible for most of us to have become as absorbed by perfume as we are now. Ten years ago if we’d stumbled across a bottle of Guerlain L’Heure Bleue and were fascinated by its combination of old-fashioned femininity and offbeat melancholy, we might have trolled through the perfume counters at department stores in big cities to smell other Guerlains, then tried in vain later to remember what we smelled. Most of us wouldn’t have had anyone to send us samples of Balmain Vent Vert and whisper how it has changed over the years, or tell us about the surprisingly terrific old fragrances at the Estée Lauder counter, or introduce us to Serge Lutens, who — at least stateside — we may not otherwise have encountered.

The internet changed all that. We can share impressions and read reviews of perfumes then swap samples to see if it’s worth ordering. We can find our Evil Scent Twins so we know what to avoid — or try. And we can meet all sorts of fascinating people.

But there are drawbacks, of course…

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