Angeli di Firenze (Santa Maria Novella)

Angels of Florence reminds me of my college days. The 2000s were a nineties encore decade, sadly tainted by the billowing black plumes of 9/11, and the many foibles of the George W. Bush administration. Men wore chains everywhere, even on their wallets, and women wore fruity florals that smelled like glorified laundry detergent. They weren't as sickly sweet as the dumb reaches of their ancestors, but they were just as generic and disposable, like everything else born after 2003. 

Santa Maria Novella's "barbie juice" perfume is actually not bad, a pleasant foray into the mindless pleasures of nondescript florals and melony-peachy nectars, all brushed with the requisite flourishes of vague greenery and frosty white musks. My best guess as to who this was aimed at in 2006 is the midwestern tourist who visited southern Europe on her summer vacation with her boyfriend, both wearing sunglasses the size of saucers. She's a second grade teacher with a Kate Spade bag and one designated pair of square-toe sandals for evening appearances. Despite being in an exotic land, she shops for crap at nine in the morning in nothing but a T-shirt and pajama bottoms, and yes, sunglasses the size of saucers. Gawk at her, and she'll pretend you don't exist.

She selects perfume not based on smell, but on the lack of it. Floral? Not too much. Rose? Yuck, grandma. Fruits, but not too heavy on the syrup. I know they're just dryer sheets, but I really wish someone would bottle these! What surprises me is how Angels of Florence manages to maintain its steady synthetic hum of laundry-grade chems for eight hours, unabated by time or weather. I guess the beautiful packaging and brazen name lend it an air of the divine, but only in the sense that you must have more money than god to choose it over the infinitely more reasonable Tommy Girl or Clinique Happy.