The best-known stories about perfume speak of love, obsession and memory. It is no accident that these words are whispered in those captivating ads where Kate Moss, caught on vintage film stock, looks wistful and freckled on a distant beach. She’s probably just aching for the next cigarette, but the fantasy is perfect — perfume is equated with consuming, hazy love. I must confess I know little of obsessive amour, but for several months, I played a strange game with a black-eyed girl who lives near me in north London. We saw each other on the street and in local shops, and cultivated a silent flirtation of scorching glances. The closest we came to sex was when fortune sat us next to each other in an internet cafe, our bare arms almost touching.

The sensuality of those few minutes was exquisite. We neither spoke nor looked at each other. And I asked for nothing more. So, you can understand my terror when I went to one of my girlfriend’s yoga classes (she is a teacher), and she said, “Oh, you must meet X, she is one of my best students. She is French and a choreographer.” Of course, X was my black-eyed love. For a few icy moments, as we were introduced, I was plunged into a scene from a French movie. We somehow hid our deceits in a conversation that appeared to be nothing more than casual politeness. But I knew that she was as horrified as I was that the rules of our game had been shattered.

I learnt more about her after the class. She was an old hand at strange love. We talked about perfume and she confessed that, sometimes, she follows a man if he is wearing a certain scent. She never talks to him; she just discreetly trails him for a few streets. She is quite specific in her tastes, and will only pursue a man wearing Caron’s Pour un Homme (from 1934), Chanel’s Cuir de Russie (1924), or Guerlain’s Habit Rouge (1965). I was surprised by both her obsessions and the age of the perfumes she adored. I knew all about Green Irish Tweed and les parfums de Becks and P Diddy, but I was unfamiliar with this hinterland of antique or vintage scent. I had never thought about perfumes that survived, almost unchanged, from a world long vanished.

The fragrances that inspire her are not advertised and can be difficult to find. For a long time, Cuir de Russie (Russian leather) was only available from Chanel. And there are not so many of us, I think, who regularly visit a Chanel boutique. It is now available online, which may spoil the exclusivity a little, but you still need to know about it to track it down. Most of the big fragrance houses keep one or two back-catalogue or vintage scents in production, but they don’t promote them because “they are not for everyone”, according to Givenchy, when I ask about Monsieur de Givenchy (1959). Speaking off the record, one house said it was desirable that people didn’t know about a particular cologne, so it remained “a secret we share with special customers”.

But there are shops that specialise in rare and cult scents. Some are involved in a trade so covert, it seems illicit; they may have just one or two bottles of a scent discontinued as long as ago as 1912. Roja Dove, who runs a boutique perfumery at Harrods, hints darkly that he has a Mouchoir de Monsieur (created in 1904, vanished in the 1980s), and that perhaps, if I am good, he will permit me a sniff.

There was a golden age of perfume, says Dove, before the big corporations engulfed the small perfume houses. Guerlain was once a family-run business, led by an auteur nose, who spent years making complex, personal scents: Jean-Paul Guerlain said his female scents were inspired by the memories of the women he loved. His Vétiver was influenced by a gardener on the family estate, who smelt of grass and carried a pipe in his back pocket. The corporations, complains Dove, have “taken the romance out of the industry”. Perhaps more subtly, they have repositioned it in the adverts. Luca Turin, perhaps the greatest living perfume writer, and a scientist who developed a new theory of smell, is critical of a globalised industry that bangs out new scents in just eight weeks. “They work in a tearing hurry,” he says.

Vintage scents are not uniformly better than the new, but they come from an older, slower world. They might carry the fin de siãcle ponce of a Dorian Gray, who sought “violets that woke the memory of dead romances”. Or they recall lost worlds, such as Cuir de Russie, influenced by the magnificent boots of the cavalry officers who once strutted the boulevards of Paris.

On a practical level, if you are unsure which scent to wear, then something that has lasted more than 50 years is a safe bet. You will find that vintage scents move with more grace than modern ones, and change more slowly on the skin. They are more feral, their vanilla dustier and their woods more mysterious. They are the product of old loves, the works of men long-buried, but, amazingly, still bottled and for sale.

MEN’S CLASSICS

EAU SAUVAGE, BY DIOR, 1966, £31 for 50ml; 020 7216 0216 Still the bestselling fragrance in France — and has been ever since it was launched. An aggressive citrus that fades to a subtle but dangerously woody and oriental mist.

HABIT ROUGE, BY GUERLAIN, 1965, £30 for 50ml; 01932 233887 The most exciting male fragrance of all time: a fizzy, semi-oriental vanilla that stays on the skin for hours. It’s strong, but with no difficult notes, and the crackling vanilla makes you feel very sexy.

EAU D’HERMES, 1951, £45 for 100ml, from Harrods; 020 7730 1234 Refined cumin and subliminal flowers, but basically ragingly feral and leathery: the divine stink of shameless and corrupt wealth.

POUR UN HOMME, BY CARON, 1934, £35 for 75ml, from Fortnum & Mason; 020 7734 8040 One of those ‘appreciate the art of the perfumier’ numbers — the vanilla and lavender battle it out, then settle and glow. Subtle, powdery, dry and sweet. And girls love it.

CUIR DE RUSSIE, BY CHANEL, 1924, £120 for 200ml; 020 7493 3836 Smooth leather that sinks gracefully to a rude animal note. Sold as a women’s fragrance, but its take on femme is so Dietrich in drag, it may as well be pour homme.

ARAMIS, 1964, £27 for 60ml; 0870 034 2566 Non-ironic bloke fragrance that, despite its dad rep, is actually a rapture in bronze or brown, culled from spices (bay leaf and juniper), shiny wood and thick leather.

LE DANDY, BY PARFUMS D’ORSAY, 1923, £60 for 100ml, from Selfridges; 0870 837 7377 Luscious, with a sugary plum, Armagnac, whisky and tobacco hit. A reissue that still carries the feel of brandy, cigars and late 19th-century dining.

HAMMAM BOUQUET, BY PENHALIGON’S, 1872, £45 for 50ml; 0800 716108 An intriguing oriental that threatens to overpower you with roses and musk, then gracefully bows and recedes.