Three favourites from Bond No 9: Chinatown, New York Nights and Greenwich Village

Do I think all the fragrances from ostentatiously priced New York luxury brand Bond No 9 are worth the price tag?

Hell no.

Scent of Peace, for example, can easily be switched out with either D&G Light Blue, or if you're after an even greater bargain, either Moschino's I Love Love or Anna Sui's Secret Wish, the latter of which was crafted the year before (2005) by the same nose (Michael Almairac) using the same palette of smells and probably mostly the same ingredients.

Another Bond I flirted with years ago, bought recently and then swapped away again is So New York, which at the time of release (2003) seemed about as sweet as fragrances got, being in the same wheelhouse as Angel, but which after two decades of ever-sweeter department store fruity-florals and niche gourmands comes off as bitter, soapy and dry to the contemporaneous sniffer.

However, I have three or four favourites from the house that are heavy-hitters in the wow-factor department. Each has its own force-field of deliciousness with the capacity to drive people to the wall at parties to make way for the wearer who surely is A Big Deal: the female DJ, the famous friend, the best-selling graphic artist, the king or queen of the room.

CHINATOWN, 2005, Aurelian Guichard.

Aurelian Guichard – the Chris Hemsworth of parfumers – must have been known as the fragrance wonderkid at the time he created this punked-up tuberose almost twenty years ago. A year or two after it came out, I found it (c2006/7) and was knocked for six. I remember being infatuated with the eroticism the fleshy peach and spicy cardamom brought to what is already a carnal white flower.

What I didn't realise when wearing it back then is that it was probably also the beginning of a love affair that surely the parfumer has with tuberose, having mastered it time and again in his career and clearly not yet got out of his system since he recently released French Flower under his own Matiere Premiere line. And I thought men were supposed to not like tuberose? I fantasise that tuberose is Guichard's love interest personified and he is unable to capture their likeness, and so tries again and again and again, like a painter and his muse.

Even though it was an early incarnation of the sweeties + tuberose combo perfume shops are chockfull of now, it's stood the test of time and still smells fresh. Stretching to find comparisons, you get a similar effect wearing the more recent Twilly d'Hermes or Armani Prive Rouge Malachite but neither are as creamy and spicy.

The niche perfume trend was in its infancy when I discovered this as fresh-out-of-daipers frag-head, and having only recently graduated from Coco Mademoiselle myself, Chinatown struck me as an audacious and thrilling meddling with the classic white floral genre: Piguet's Fracas – also "restored" – (a word aptly used by Colognoisseur) by Guichard himself; Guerlain's Jardins de Bagatelle; Givenchy's Amarige etc.

For that reason it always symbolises boldness and subversiveness to me; yet can be worn comfortably all year around and in most environments.

A cityscape offering exciting adventures - what a bottle!

NEW YORK NIGHTS, 2017, Unnamed Parfumer

Talking of white floral gourmands getting louder over the subsequent couple of decades, New York Nights is an unabashed gardenia, salted caramel cupcake and ocean spray explosion. Its edible facets are dialled up to at least nine, tempered by a driftwood aspect that wobbles between cloying and brilliant with every breath. As if that isn't enough, you also get a wafts of espresso, white chocolate and something fruity and overripe.

This isn't something I could wear every day, but when I'm in the right mood it's a guilty pleasure, like a night gorging on Ben & Jerry's whilst drinking expensive Champagne straight from the bottle, which of course I do all the time.

GREENWICH VILLAGE, 2019, Unnamed Parfumer.

Like most of the fragrances that have taken on the mantle as a 'signature' for me, I was pretty much offended by Greenwich Village on first sniff. However, as it dried down from what I perceived at the time to be an obnoxious mango lollipop melted by the sun into the fabric of an overly-detergented sweater, I found myself in something of a fragrance trance.

I wish I knew the parfumer behind this one: it smells like Francis Kurkdjian and Quentin Bisch concocted it in a frenzy whilst high together.

From that you can infer it has the same molecular fuzziness as Baccarat Rouge, blended – quite literally perhaps in a beach-side bar cocktail shaker – with boozy lychees on smashed ice.

It's made all the more special for me because I bought it from the Bond No 9 store in New York on my first trip to the city. That was the only reason I could justify the price tag.

I wear this on nights out because it radiates something close to two roads away. Every time I am in an Uber wearing it I open the window and hope I'm not going to knock out the driver with my sensational, almost neon-smelling and near-physical hyper-stinking cloud of sexy and very much 'on trend' deliciousness.

Honorable Mention

NEW BOND STREET, 2018, Unnamed parfumer

One of the first fragrances I fell in love with was Cartier's Declaration (Jean-Claude Ellena, 1998) which I used to spray on myself whilst working in the perfume hall of a department store, whilst at university. It mattered not a jot to me that this was a male-targeted release – I loved the cardamom smell of Scandinavian buns and Indian kulfi, not something you came across much in perfume back then.

Nothing like New Bond Street, but certainly the origins of my attachment to spicy, warm scents. I love cardamom in a fragrance so much I will forgive a muddled blend. The addition of cardamom in a fragrance immediately elevates it to at least a 7 out of 10.

New Bond Street is not the easiest 'like'. It's loud and scratchy and spicy and lactonic. Cardamom isn't even listed as a note, but on my skin it's there alongside flamed chestnut and chilli-spiced cocoa. Fierce in the opening, it dries down to be a tame puss-cat of a fragrance, purring softly into your nostrils when you put nose-to-skin.

Possibly this wouldn't be top of my list as a full-bottle purchase for a rich and spicy scent but I really enjoyed the many bon-bon samples I was given at the Bond St boutique and will definitely revisit it for winter nights.