“I don’t get it,” says an old university friend. “Surely you either like a fragrance or you don’t?” We were discussing our respective days. As a criminal barrister, she was off to assess the profile of a suspected rapist; my day, meanwhile, would be spent being “profiled” for perfume. A service increasingly popular with boutiques, profiling is designed to help clients discover the right fragrance for them. (It’s arguable who put their law degree to better use, my friend or myself, but I defend the right to a signature fragrance, m’lud.)

As someone who isn’t loyal to any one scent but who nonetheless has olfactory opinions, I’m inclined to be as sceptical as my friend. Perfume is like art, right? You don’t know much about it but you know what you like. And, more pertinently, what you don’t like.

Apparently not. “It’s hard to find a fragrance because there are so many,” says perfumer Azzi Glasser, whose profiling service at Harvey Nichols in London poses questions of loves, hates and favourite designers.