Couple of interesting articles today on perfume.
First, the Detroit Free Press covers celebrity and celebrity-endorsed perfumes, which now make up 23% of the top 100 perfumes. That figure kind of stunned me. Offerings coming up are from Derek Jeter, Lindsay Lohan, Hilary Duff, and Mariah Carey. I see this as just a bad trend since almost none of this group of fragrances ever seems very inspired. Some of them are pretty good as far as sniffage, but all tend to be not very unique, aimed more at capturing a “star smell” than to create a unique fragrance. Shame, that.
In contrast is this article, which covers how some fragrance companies are relaunching old fragrances to bolster profits. Coty is bringing back ck One, Clinique is bringing out a big ad campaign for Happy, Prescriptives plans a big relaunch of Calyx. To me, most of these aren’t that old. I would hope they’d dig a little further back into the historical closet for some great classics. There’s my age talking.
That article also states that the average life of a perfume is a year, as opposed to five years or more before 2000. The capper statistic in this article is they say if you combined all the perfumes that came out between 1970 and 1989, that’s still not as many launches of perfume that came out in 2005.
March-
I liked Calyx, too- it had a naive, brash, endearing quality…
Lisa, I’m with you on this one.
I admit my Achilles heels-perfume being the primary character flaw, with earrings a close second [and lips a 3rd].
That said,the overwhelming malaise from which we collectively suffer [as a society] is stunning…we’re applying Band-aids to festering sores, and never pausing to ask WHY…
In life, I generally prefer less of something real, and usually do without if real isn’t available.
Thanks for your thoughts-
Sad reading really – but it is just like our fixations with shoes and before that, clothes. Too much is never enough in the getting and spending mentality where more means better; rather than better simply being one or two very well made things that last forever and never go out of fashion.
Hey, I really liked Prescriptives’ Calyx — it was very dis-stink-tive.:d I guess I hadn’t noticed it was gone.
Yikes! Is all I have to say to the those articles and I really don’t look forward to being attacked by the Happy ads again. I remember my sophomore year of high school by a few things and two of them are 1) the ever obnoxious thinks the greatest thing since who knows what would not stop talking about how great the scent of Happy was and how it perfectly fit her personality and how she was going to be an amazing lawyer and 2) the Happy ad campaign around Christmas that was everywhere.
Those last statistics are truly terrifying. I guess it’s like dilution in sports teams – more franchises, but just as many good players as the olden days. The problem then emerges with Gresham’s law – bad money drives out good – and not enough people can find and recognize the good products to save them.
“Newcomers now have an average shelf-life of less than a year, compared with five years or more before 2000, NPD Group, a market-research firm in Port Washington, N.Y., says.”
Whew. For a minute there, I thought I was going to have to practice my fastball against a brick wall to cull the 90% of “past expiration date” frags from my herd.
It would be entertaining and educational to conduct a blind test of celebrity scents: Kimora Lee Simmons’ Baby Phat Goddess, Britney Spears’ Curious and Shania Twain’s Shania. Or some other unlikely celebrity grouping. Not so much as to compare and contrast – just a simple “pass or fail”.
Oh gosh, not Happy, not again! More Happies? Jeez.
I have a 17 year old stepdaughter and she is extremely drawn to celebrity perfume, Brittney, etc. Myself on the other hand would be embarrased to say I was wearing Brittany, etc. I do love perfume and am always searching for something to fall in love with and I was thinking of revisiting some of the scents I loved in the eighties. Most of the frgrances I try now don’t seem to do any thing for me. I can’t smell them and nobody seems to notice what I wear. I am a newbie to this site.. and alot of the perfume you review I haven’t heard of and can not smell before buying because they are not available in my area.:((