The talented mister sniffy

Boston stinks.

This time I'm not speaking of my passive-aggressive relationship toward our fair city and its lack of a Sanrio boutique (Seriously, can't a grown man get a decent Hello Kitty toaster in this town?). What I'm saying is that this city literally smells bad. Before you start sending me nasty missives, the assessment of Boston's aroma comes directly from the nose of Harry Slatkin, the home fragrance impresario who has crafted custom candle scents for Elton John and Madonna, along with decadently fragranced candles for Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue. He even showed Martha Stewart how to make a candle on TV.

The upshot is that Harry Slatkin has one very talented nose. But he does not randomly pull up in a city and start sniffing. He's in Boston because I asked him and his nose to assess the smells of the city. I am interested in finding out how successful retail stores are at scenting their environs, but I also want Slatkin's olfactory skills to assess a few of the city's more popular locales. Shockingly, he agrees to my experiment.

"I've always been sensitive to scent," Slatkin tells me as I collect him from his hotel for our olfactory adventure. "Everyone thinks 'How wonderful, you walk around and smell all these wonderful things.' But I smell the bad as well. That's the hard part. I can't turn it off."

Actually, Slatkin does have a way to turn it off. He uses a lightly scented scarf that he keeps around his neck at all times. The scarf is so big it borders on pashmina shawl territory. Because his nose is so finely tuned, there is a rule in his office that lunches cannot include garlic and onions. He doesn't like the smell of eggs. And please, don't get him started on fish.

I quickly learn about the talented Mr. Slatkin when we enter Faneuil Hall.

"Ugh, it smells like a garbage can," he says as we stand near a juice vendor.

Really? Garbage? I suspect he's about to reach for the scarf. Instead, he moves in for a closer smell of the ice that sits beneath plastic cups of juice. "That's it, it's the ice. Have you ever left an ice tray in the freezer for a long time and noticed that it smells bad? That's what's going on here."

In most cases I don't smell the same things as Slatkin, but my sense of smell could best be described as "goldfish with a head cold."

But even with my terrible sense of smell, I'm still able to pick up on stores that go over-board.

"I'm sort of at fault for that, because we do scent the stores," Slatkin says of Bath and Body Works, where he develops scents for candles and other home fragrances.

The practice of scenting stores has been around since the days of Estée Lauder and Helena Rubinstein, but it is now de rigueur everywhere from Hollister to the Sharper Image. And then there are the stores that should scent, but don't, such as the Crocs store.

"The first thing I can tell you is that this store reeks of cheap plastic," he says shortly after we walk into the Crocs store at Quincy Market. "And to think that people put these on their feet with that smell."

After the Crocs store, we stroll over to Crabtree & Evelyn.

"I smell powder, and it's just awful," he says after a quick sniff. "You can smell alcohol-based fragrance."

Crate & Barrel?

"It's nice how it smells like something just got opened out of a crate. This is really a no-smell store."

Banana Republic?

"This is a letdown. There's no scent. We could be in any Lord & Taylor."

The Harley Davidson store?

"I'm smelling a strawberry and cherry mix. It smells like a cheap air freshener that you buy for your car at the car wash."

Surprisingly, the store that Slatkin applauds for superior scenting is Abercrombie & Fitch. It uses its fragrance, along with images on the walls, the clothes, the music, and the comely young sales clerks, to project an image of sensuality.

"The whole thing really works," he says.

Slatkin has made it through the morning without reaching for his scented shawl even once, but I suspect he wants to as we walk the streets of the North End.

"It smells like old garbage," he says. Thankfully, the smell of sweet, rising dough from Il Panino Express overpowers it. "That's much better," he says, and happily the scarf gets the rest of the day off.