Summing up Rive Gauche grungy in style, it was hardly the Golden Globes yet made up for the lack of glamour by being unpredictable and thoroughly entertaining.

FORBES: Spotlight On Bernard Henri-L��vy's Le Prix Saint-Germain, Paris

When a real-life Frenchwoman moves into the neighborhood, Ms. Beaulieu sneaks over to inhale a bit of Paris through forbidden spritzes of Yves Saint Laurent's perfume Rive Gauche.

WSJ: Book Review: Diary of a Nose | The Perfume Lover

For the son of a shopkeeper executed by the Yugoslav Communists, getting to the rive gauche was a welcome escape from the gloom of the Balkans, and it guaranteed him a prestigious job as a professor of literature back home.

ECONOMIST: Charlemagne

Turin had great fun penning his reviews, giving raves to fragrances he liked ("Thanks to Rive Gauche, mortals can at last know the scent of the goddess Diana's bath soap") and slamming those he hated ("57 for Her is a sad little thing, an incongruous dried-prunes note with a metallic edge that manages the rare feat of being at once cloying and harsh").

FORBES: The scent of money