The New York Times' perfume critic

the kindergarten and mess I Am Love star Tilda Swinton is the latest celebrity to cross over into perfume-making, and she knows she's an unlikely actress for a "slash" job. "It's not something I ever, in a million Sundays, would have thought anyone would have asked me to do, because I don't really know about fragrance and I don't really care about fragrance," she admitted last night, seated on a stool at Henri Bendel for her perfume launch. "I've worn one fragrance for 25 years: Penhaligon's Bluebell." (An aside: What is with celebrities just coming out and admitting that they really know nothingabout their side gigs?) But Swinton rightly points out that playing with a bunch of raw scents to throw something hopefully lovely into a bottle is pretty fun!

"When I realized what they were really offering me was the opportunity to go into the kindergarten and mess around and have absolute final cut and put whatever I wanted into this bottle, I couldn't resist. So I had a real ball! I thought about how great it would be if I could have a smell that would keep me at home wherever I was. So I started to think about my home smells, and the principal ingredients became ginger, baby carrot, pumpkin. I'm a November child — a pumpkin child — so this whole idea of orange is there. It smells like the only home I have: my house in the north of Scotland." And, of course, the actress's scent is "omnisex," she said.

We thought Swinton's Like This smelled nice, but we turned to a real expert, the New York Times' perfume critic, Chandler Burr: "It's a below-the-surface gourmand," he explained. "It is a contemporary, abstract expressionist perfume, late twentieth century. It does not contain any shock values that some of the super-neons — like those made for Britney Spears, or Gucci Rush kind of pioneered that, that overtly artificial scent — it doesn't have any of that. But it is not representational art at all, it's conceptual, that's why it's abstract expressionist. And it doesn't give you any landmarks." For comparison: "Pamela Anderson's was the worst celebrity scent," he said. "It was something you wouldn't even have in a CVS, literally. Beyoncé's is good: It was a well-made, commercial, feminine scent. I was very disappointed in Queen Latifah — it just doesn't have any character at all."