Many people believe that the current proliferation of celebrity endorsed perfumes lining the shelves of our perfumes are somewhat of a phenomenon recent. 2002 Coty perfume "Glow" by Jennifer "J-Lo" Lopez is often credited with boosting trend, but in reality, perfumes celebrities are much longer than that. This article aims to reconsider the history of perfume fame and highlight some of the entries more noticeable in the last 50 years.
While it is undeniable that the large amount of "celebrity" fragrances that are currently on sale is far beyond what has previously been available, the trend has indeed become common since the 1950s.
Like many in the perfume industry roots of this phenomenon can be traced back to France, where the celebrities of the day (as Jean-Louis Trintignant), as would team up with famous perfume houses to create signature scents. But it was Givenchy conjunction with Audrey Hepburn in the years 50 which was the most notable example. Over the next 30 years, a number of celebrity scents were launched (from similar forms of Sophia Lauren, Omar Shariff and Andy Warhol) who despite not reaching the market dominance that celebrity perfumes today proved extremely popular.
The 1980s saw a spike in celebrity perfumes starting with the infamous' White Diamonds by Elizabeth Taylor. At this stage many perfumers aware that if it was a difficult task to build a new brand of perfume from scratch, the process could be greatly accelerated by the launch on the back of the name of a famous person. Despite the boom of the late 80, the names of celebrity fragrances is losing its popularity continues through the 90's as designer perfumes (from brands like Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren) have become dominant. This brings us full circle to 2002, when Coty decided to team up with pop star Jennifer Lopez to create a new perfume that has been so successful an enormous amount of perfume followed suit resulting in the prevalence of celebrity scents available today. The recent glut of celebrity fragrances, however, has its advantages as many of them are made with the nose of a professional perfumer Yet they are often available at the same price as discount fragrances provide customers with alternative budget to designer perfumes (such as hugo boss Fragrances).
Sam Qam is a designer and discount perfume collector (Current favourite: hugo boss perfume).