At the Hurly-Burly Malls, There’s Something Special in the Air : Shopping: Smiling, patient, polite . . . and deadly? Though the perfume airstrike is rare, ‘fragrance models’ still inspire the urge to run.

NORTHRIDGE —  Trigger fingers poised atop bottles of amber liquid, the stylish, impeccably groomed women whose job it is to ambush holiday shoppers assumed strategic positions Friday at the entrance of The Broadway department store at the Northridge Fashion Center.

“Ladies, would you like to try a new fragrance today?” Psssst.

“Have you tried Bal a Versailles? It’s an old fragrance, a classic.” Psssst.

Ah, the holidays. That special time of year when elves, colored lights and a Muzak rendition of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” take over the mall. And what would a holiday at the mall be without the Perfume Brigade?

The chic, perfectly coiffed women who arm themselves with atomizers are called “fragrance models.” They work part time, roving from store to store, fragrance company to fragrance company. The money is good, they say--$10 to $15 an hour.

All they have to do is smile, smile, smile as shoppers negotiate the gantlet of glass counters and display tables at a store’s entrance. And, if they obtain a customer’s permission--spray, spray, spray.

But the task of a professional spritzer is not an easy one. “Don’t you dare!” say wary shoppers as the fragrance models approach, bottle in hand.

Several fragrance models interviewed Friday said some people still resent them even though hardly anyone launches perfume attacks on unsuspecting shoppers these days.

“One woman pulled out pepper spray on me,” said Karen Vail of Santa Clarita, who was promoting Giorgio’s new fragrance, Wings. “She thought that I was going to attack her with this bottle and she pulled it out of her purse. She had a little wild look in her eye. I probably should have called the mall police.”

Store employees and fragrance models insist that although competition is fierce, such extreme reactions are unnecessary in the current era of kinder, gentler spritzing blitzes.

Nowadays, they say they usually spray paper cards--not people--and hand them to shoppers.

“I don’t spray automatically,” Cheryl Frederiksen said. “I try to avoid that. I keep my finger off the nozzle.”

Caroline Steinberg has been a fragrance model for 20 years. She worked the crowd like a carnival barker, offering gift baskets with a purchase of Laura Biagolli’s new, vanilla-based scent. Meanwhile, her daughter was continuing the family legacy, pitching perfume miles away at the Glendale Galleria.

Still, the job is tough on the feet, the back, the ego.

On Friday, most shoppers passed the fragrance models by, dismissing them with a head shake or a firm “No”

But at J. C. Penney, Habibeh Hashim of Northridge meekly held up her hand for Roberta Sandor to anoint with a splash of Royal Copenhagen.

“I’m used to it,” Hashim said. “Sometimes, when I’m not in a rush, I like to try some fragrance, but normally--no.” While a few others also stopped to smell the flowers, there were no purchases.

Such constant rejection can’t be a confidence booster.

“I don’t take it personally,” said Sandor, 36, of Moorpark, a mother of two who wore a dark suit and a smile as she pushed Royal Copenhagen at J. C. Penney on Friday morning. During the afternoon, she hawked Calvin Klein’s Obsession at a Robinsons-May store at the other end of the mall.

Meanwhile, at The Broadway, Vail said she has no problem with snubs. “It’s easy for me. I’m one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. We get rejected all the time.”

At Bullock’s, the approach was more low-key. It is the only department store in the mall that doesn’t place its fragrance counter smack-dab in the entryway. Instead, Bullock’s lets customers follow their noses.

“I think customers are a lot more sophisticated today,” said Lori Sepanik, a former fragrance model who manages the store’s cosmetics and fragrance department. “We don’t attack. Customers actually come to us, seeking us out.”

Sepanik also said she doesn’t give customers the opportunity to say no. “The strategy is, we don’t ask them those types of questions,” she said. Instead, she said, she asks customers, “ ‘How would you like to be beautiful today?’ Nobody would say no to that.”

Psssst.