A very sexy Serge Lutens perfume came into my office the other day. It was a gorgeous scent, all spicy and incredibly complex. It seemed to change every time I took a sniff of the bottle and everyone smelt something different in it.

Now, some people love perfumes and have one for every day of the week and flit shamelessly from one to the other. Not me. I've said before I'm pretty much monogamous when it comes to scents and, while I have come across ones that are nice, very few of them tempt me to cheat. But this little chameleon did.

Two people in the office, a man and a woman, tried it on and were politely staking their claim on it. A few hours later, the competition was over.

I've always known perfumes smell different on each individual, due to body chemistry and such like, but it was really interesting to smell how the fragrance developed over the afternoon.

It was nice on the girl (yes, okay, it was me) but on the guy it had settled into a fantastically spicy, sexy fragrance. One woman told him he smelt so good she quite fancied biting him, and I think he'd have bitten himself too given half the chance. He smelt wonderful!

Many people, myself included, love the idea of a signature scent, something that is immediately associated with them. However, it's a bit overambitious, perhaps, if you consider just how popular many perfumes are -- I'm not the only woman in the world to wear Chanel No 5!

Even allowing for the changes an individual's body chemistry has on a fragrance, it can be difficult to get a truly unique one. One way of pretty much guaranteeing this is with a bit of fragrance combining.

It may seem a little frightening at first, to say nothing of disastrous, as you investigate combinations that go together as beautifully as chocolate and minced beef, but using products from different fragrance can offer some gorgeous results.

The Jo Malone range is probably best known for spearheading this idea. The fragrances in the range are just made for mixing and the powers that be recommend taking two or three scents and layering them to create your own fragrance.

Other brands (The Body Shop is one that comes to mind) offer little chemistry sets of different fragrances for mixing and matching.

There are no real rules for all this and for most people a bit of experimentation is the way to find their perfect combination. But to help avoid any complete disasters, there are a few guidelines to help you along the way.

Using two or more fragrances from the same family such as spicy, citrus, floral or woody will enhance and give depth without changing the "character" of the scent, while combining fragrances from different families will completely alter the scent and will either be fantastic or will keep you house-bound.

- Brenda McCormick