Now, everyone’s a perfume critic

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: or, as often, with venomous contempt. A perfume like Poison, from Dior, is especially polarising to bloggers, many of whom are stay-at-home moms or professionals in other fields. An enthusiast on nowsmellthis.com described Poison as “a warm, luxurious velvet blanket draped across a satin settee”. On the same site, the perfume was assailed as “a railroad spike through the brain”.

Black Orchid from Tom Ford was praised as “melting cupcakes on hot skin”. But a detractor called it “aged Romano in a carnivorous orchid hothouse”.

When they wish to be especially withering, bloggers designate a scent as a “scrubber”, the kind of smell you can’t wash off fast enough. Their enthusiasm, though, can be infectious. Online scent aficionados have become a force to be reckoned with in the $2.9 billion fragrance industry.