I always liked the idea of ratings: in a quick glance it tells you what the reviewer thinks about the reviewed subject.

Not too many perfume bloggers do it nowadays: out of those who I currently read (and who’s still active), it’s only Victoria (Bois de Jasmine) and Steve (The Scented Hound) who do it consistently.

Since I rarely even attempt to do regular reviews, most of my stories are about perfumes I like and I do not consider myself qualified enough to judge perfumes objectively, I didn’t come around introducing my rating system until now. My Perfume Portrait page was enough. What changed? I started recently the new Second Sunday Samples series, which I think calls for ratings, since most of those perfumes that I mention in it will never make it to the Portrait page.

Many people who rate anything do all types of disclaimers and excuses about the subjective nature of those. My ratings are subjective to the extreme: I’m not going to assign my Sea Stars* based on what I, subjectively, think about the quality, originality or any other qualities of perfume in question. My ratings will reflect only how much I liked or hated perfume – for my consumption, for my own use and pleasure. I will be using half-stars as well – just to give me more flexibility.

Just to give you an example of my subjectivity, Chanel No. 5 gets 1.5 – 2 sea stars in my system; and Jo Malone Wood Sage & Sea Salt is about 4.

 

	Love, own, wear and never want to be without
	Like, wear and will finish the bottle/decant/sample that I’ve got and then think if I want more
	Wouldn’t mind wearing if a bottle/decant would fall off the sky, might wear what I have but won’t pursue it
	I wouldn’t want to wear it if I had a choice but I could talk myself into doing that on a desert island
	Would rather go scentless then wear it

 

* Those are actually sea stars, you can see a larger version of it here as a part of my Zen Garden