L’Oreal, which licenses Ralph Lauren’s perfume brand, has generally done well by the designer. Among the masculines: the massive, multi-billion-dollar Polo franchise, created in 1978 by the perfumer Carlos Benaim. (Full disclosure: This is the first scent I purchased with my own money, age 17 and feeling very proud.) Among the feminines: the still-gorgeous Lauren, an olfactory mink stole, created the same year by Bernard Chant.

In the popular consciousness, Lauren’s masculine fragrances somewhat supersede the brand’s feminines, rather like the scents L’Oreal creates for another of its licencers, Giorgio Armani. Armani’s people are all but desperate for a major feminine hit (Aqua di Gio for women does well, but nowhere near as well as its masculine counterpart), and L’Oreal’s creative team in charge of the Lauren brand is also eager for a bona fide feminine blockbuster. It struck out with Glamorous — an excellent, mass-luxury American perfume by Harry Fremont —which is now discontinued and deserved better. The team’s latest attempt is Notorious, which was almost as oddly built as its name was oddly chosen.

There is probably no designer in history less notorious than Ralph Lauren. He is the Martha Stewart of fashion (minus the jail time). In fact, the only notorious thing about him is that his name used to be Lifshitz. And by today’s standards of Paris Hilton-esque notoriety, Lifshitz doesn’t cut it.

Then there’s the perfume. The creative director Jennifer Mullarkey, working with the perfumer Olivier Gillotin, has made a strange miscalculation in an otherwise meticulously planned production line of mass luxury scents. Lauren (the perfume) is opulent elegance. Romance is Hamptons evening elegance. And Mullarkey is expertly managing a diversification targeted at teenagers: L’Oreal has been putting out what in the automobile industry are referred to as “entry-level models” — hot, neon, fruity olfactory candy like Ralph, Ralph Wild and Ralph Rocks. These smell like berries and cupcakes on steroids with Coppertone and a dash of convertible Mustang, and they’re lots of fun.

Notorious? For a start, it smells pale. You’re uncertain that the spray has hit your skin. Lean in close. Yes, something’s there, but it’s detectable in the way that AM radio picks up ghostlike murmurings. The technical specs on this machine are subpar. Aesthetically, Notorious breaks as much new ground as next year’s polo shirt. It’s so bland that it’s actually difficult to describe. The perfume is not floral, it’s not fruit, it’s not spice — and it’s not bad, exactly, but I’ll be darned if I can say what it is.

Though the scent may at first smell sophisticated, you can never really make out what it’s saying. It may appear pretty, but there’s so much Vaseline on the lens that Mickey Rourke could pass for Gisele Bundchen.

It may be the subtlest of perfumes, or it may be an opulent bouquet of flowers that, to one’s surprise, turns out to have almost no fragrance at all. And, for such profound ambiguity, this perfume may in fact become notorious.