In the 1970s, Ralph Lauren (as all designers do) sold the rights to a licensee to make perfumes under his name in exchange for a royalty. (Usually 2 percent to 7 percent of the return.) The trick is selling to the right licensee, one who employs good creative execs who then hire good perfumers to make juices that are both artistically solid and commercially successful. Among the major licensees are Estee Lauder, LVMH, BPI, Clarins, Coty, Interparfums and L’Oreal.

Lauren sold his license to L’Oreal, which turned out to be a wise decision. BPI has a much better reputation in the industry for putting real money into their juices; l’Oreal’s rep is for being financially tight with a formula. Still, L’Oreal has done a generally good job for Lauren. Still, L’Oreal has done a generally good job for Lauren, even if the performance has been mixed.

Case in point: its two latest feminines for the brand, both 2008 launches, are Notorious and Love, Ralph Lauren. Notorious was created by the perfumer Olivier Gillotin under L’Oreal’s creative director in charge of the Lauren brand, Jennifer Mullarkey, and it is a complete mismatch between name and juice, unless this is Notorious Lite. Its smell is extremely difficult to describe precisely because it has the character of a Jessica Simpson video. Vanilla? Hay? Salt-water taffy? Gillotin has made something that sort of smells like skin (a k a synthetic musks) and sort of smells like flowers, but doesn’t. It is, in fact, an olfactory Gap ad, although that might be too kind.

And why? Look at the terrific scents l’Oreal has done for the brand. Romance is an utterly lovely American fragrance, a girl in a Ralph Lauren summer dress. Romance’s genre is the specialty of Harry Fremont, who perfectly distills clear-skin-and-white-teeth commercial American luxury, Lauren’s specialty. The discontinued Glamourous was nonchalantly gorgeous, another Fremont work that deserved a better fate. And the very first feminine from the Lauren/L’Oreal team, the 1978 Lauren by Bernard Chant, remains a masterpiece of deep, luscious, purple, sweet summer fruit and one of the best retros it is possible to wear.

And then they put out Love, Ralph Lauren ? Mullarkey creative-directed the perfumers Ellen Molner and, again, Gillotin, and here’s one of the problems: it smells like L’Oreal has front-loaded the money a bit. If you put this on, you will have a five-minute window in which you’ll find it difficult to resist buying. After five minutes, a bit of the money burns off (the top notes smell the most expensive to me) but you still may well get out a credit card. The good news is that it stabilizes at a very decent level. It’s as conventionally beautiful as the women in the “Fifth Avenue to Lexington above 70th but below 96th” zone, all getting their hair highlighted at the same salon. There’s zero edge, and this thing will never, ever be worn to a hotel on Rivington Street. That said, it will make quite a few men in the East 80’s lean appreciatively into the necks of quite a few smartly dressed women. It’s safe. It’s pretty.