Perfumes

Miryana Babic fell in love in a tiny perfumery in Florence. She picked up a bottle of Caterina de Medici by i Profumi di Firenze, dabbed a drop of the fragrance on her wrist and was smitten. "The scent is like a living flower," she says. "There is a sparkling quality that only nature can make because when you smell a flower, you're smelling the totality--the root, the leaves." Babic couldn't stop thinking about the perfume, so she set out to bring it home to Santa Monica. A few months later, the entrepreneur was importing the collection to boutiques such as Palmetto in L.A. and Planet Blue in Malibu.

A slender bottle of serge lutens' Fleurs d'Oranger, Sophia Coppola's favorite orange blossom scent; an apothecary jar of chartreuse-colored Absolute Absinthe, with hints of cannabis, black tea and lotus flowers; a faceted Art Deco bottle of L'Artisan Parfumeur Passage D'Enfer, evoking sweet roses and ginger until something slightly dark and intriguing creeps in, a whisper of frankincense, a smidgen of cedar. They're all on the shelves of Apothia, the jewel box of a fragrance boutique at Fred Segal on Melrose that is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month.

Sending a dozen gorgeous red roses is a safe bet for Mother's Day. But if you're looking for something even more alluring, try this spring's must-have rose fragrance: Kilian's Liaisons Dangereuses. The perfume, with its notes of Ceylon cinnamon, geranium, Indian sandalwood and musk layered over Damascus rose, is at once complex and ethereal. Kilian's is one of the season's new rose scents, joining those by Escada, Paul Smith and Armani. Yes, it's expensive--$225 for 50 milliliters.

WHAT does shopping smell like? According to the New York perfume house Bond no. 9, it's hard-hitting gardenia and creamy vanilla (if you're a girl) and grassy marine notes and woodsy incense (if you're a boy). To us, Bond's new fragrances -- named Saks Fifth Avenue and supposedly inspired by the eau de store -- smelled kind of old, like that sales clerk who's been behind the counter since 1957.

On a warm autumn morning, Jean-Claude Ellena emerges from his glass-walled villa perched on a wooded hilltop in the Riviera backcountry near the village of Cabris. Dressed in gray slacks and a crisp white shirt, he is quietly handsome with a ready laugh and a mischievous glint in his eyes. At 60, he carries about him an aura of Cary Grant. Although Ellena rarely gives interviews, today he is happy to talk.

Dashanta Harris is the customer perfume makers dream of. "I'm a big fan of smelling good," the 21-year-old UCLA senior said as she left Nordstrom in West Los Angeles last week with a bottle of Jean Paul Gaultier cologne, "and I want other people to smell good too." The Jean Paul Gaultier was for her boyfriend. Her father is also on her fragrance-for-Christmas list, and she's given such gifts to her mother and brother for holidays past.

I was very interested to read Laurie Berger's article about body odor on airplanes ["If a Seatmate Smells Bad, Come Clean to the Crew -- Quickly," Travel Q&A, Dec. 4]. And I was alarmed to read that the woman who wrote to you reported that the flight attendant sprayed air freshener in the plane and that passengers dowsed themselves with rosewater in the lavatory. Had I been on that flight, the airline would have had a passenger in anaphylactic shock within moments -- and possibly a dead passenger, me. I am one of millions of people who are allergic to perfumes, scents, cleaning fluids and yes -- even to many "natural" scents, such as rosewater.

To me, perfume is like cleavage--too sexy for work. Rather, that's what I thought before Alexandra Balahoutis ushered me into the custom-blend carriage and widened my perfume horizons. Alexandra, the 31-year-old proprietor of Strange Invisible Perfumes in Venice, was going to create a fragrance solely for me. Like a couturier of scent, she would take the measure of my primal likes and dislikes.

Ever wondered what human existence smells like? Now's your chance to get a big whiff. Inspired by the upcoming film "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer," which is based on Patrick Suskind's bestselling novel, perfumer Thierry Mugler and a perfumer from International Flavors & Fragrances decided to bring some of the story's nicer scents to life, or at least, to nose. The movie, opening Dec.