Ok, raise your hand if you'd like to see a moratorium on new niche brands? At the very least, I'd like to see an independent judging panel evaluate each line, sniff a sampling of their wares, and determine if they have anything to offer that the world really needs. Given how much product is already out there, we don't need much, do we? More product makes it harder to find the perfect scent, not easier.

I used to define a perfumista as someone who wants to smell everything, but I can't say I fall into that category anymore. I don't want to smell everything if that means smelling 1500+ new fragrances a year, and that's my (obviously unofficial) estimate of what we're going to see before 2008 is over*. More and more often, new niche lines launch, and after reading the fragrance descriptions, I decide I'm just going to save myself some time and trouble and not smell them at all.

Byredo was one of those lines. They launched five fragrances earlier this year, and as I said at the time, none of the fragrance descriptions made me drool on my keyboard. So I didn't chase after them. Luckily, a kind friend sent me a sample of Byredo Pulp so I could see what I was missing...

Boudicca, the London-based design house of Zowie Broach and Brian Kirkby, will launch Wode, their first fragrance, this fall (it was introduced in conjunction with their Paris couture collection this week):

An experiment five years in the making, involving a small army of specialists who've all signed non-disclosure agreements, it's more of an anti-perfume that Kirkby claims "does something never done before and is applied in a new way." But here's the kicker: it won't be available for sale when it's unveiled in a "spectacular" September launch. "If I say too much I'll be in breach," explains Kirkby, "but it will not follow the conventional route of a fragrance."

The fragrance is named for woad...