Designer & Celebrity Fragrances

The array of fragrances that are tagged and promoted by a well-known designer or celebrity (singers and actors) is staggering. The fragrance monopolies like Coty pay big bucks to have the celebrity with a high recognition factor to promote their next big thing. If the fragrance is successful, it will stay in production over the years (Elizabeth Taylor's fragrances come to mind, as well as Halston). One just has to scan the top perfume sellers on online fragrance sites to know who's hot this particular year, and what has been discounted. Some just fade away like a cancelled TV show - in the late 70's my mother and I were fans of Cie, promoted by actress Candice Bergen. Candice is still acting but the fragrance is long gone.

So part of my search involved sampling the popular offerings of Brittney, Sarah Jessica Parker, Marc Jacobs, Ed Hardy, J. Lo, Gwen Stefani, Beckham, Vera Wang and many others. How good are they, and how well do they stand up against the classics? Some perfumes, like Shalimar, have been around since the 1920's and have remarkable staying power.

Let's put it this way: some do, some don't. Some are lovely, some are ick - it's a real mixed bag. The common thread is that the performer or designer aims to translate their personalities into a fragrance. Mr. Sexyback himself, Justin Timberlake, has a fragrance called Play that my daughter describes as 'sexy guy scent'.

So here's a random sampling and my opinions of some of the designer & celebrity fragrances:

Believe, Brittney Spears - Light, lively and fresh scent - very nice, but more for a younger girl like my daughter.
Daisy, Marc Jacobs - Light floral that doesn't last very long, pleasant but meh.
Lovely and Covet, Sarah Jessica Parker - Kind of stinky; the heavy musks are unwearable for me.
Angel, Thierry Mugler - WOW - packs a punch and smells gorgeous. I could wear this all day.
Cashmere Mist, Donna Karan - bland floral that makes this middle aged woman feel old.
Juicy Couture - fun, sweet, potent scent - much nicer than its newer scent Viva La Juicy which is overwhelming.
Princess, Vera Wang - also very sweet but young. Some newer Princesses have appeared on the market (Glam Princess is quite enticing) and her other scents are very feminine and light. Hard to choose from this line.
Essence, Narcisco Rodriguez - Heavy duty floral that I'm very fond of but not sure if it completely works on me. Beautiful base notes in this scent.
Glow, J. Lo - Surprisingly feminine floral that my daughter has taken possession of.
L'eau d'Issey, Issey Miyake - Lovely floral for the winter months, his other perfumes are ethereal. I'd buy them all.
Black Star, Avril Lavigne - Overbearing scent that makes me sneeze. Pass.

In the past I have purchased certain designer or celebrity fragrances - wore Oscar de la Renta as a bride in 1987, bought Giorgio on my honeymoon in Freeport, Bahamas, and Sung by Alfred Sung was also a favourite back then. However, apart from Halston which I used to rebuy at duty free shops when travelling, I have never purchased any of them a second time. The classics, like Miss Dior, have been replenished time and again. That's the staying power of a signature scent, and what sets them apart from the others that will disappear in time.

House of Chanel

Ah, Chanel. House of some of the finest fragrances in the world. I tried out several of Chanel's fragrances: No. 5, Allure, Coco, Coco Mademoiselle and Chance.

First of all, I have a confession to make about the most popular perfume in the world, Chanel No. 5: I don't like it very much. I must be one of the few people in the world who dislikes it; however, I do love their commercials, especially the brilliant epic commercial starring Nicole Kidman made a couple of years ago.

In the tests, I liked Allure, Chance and Coco Mademoiselle. Chance is a true 'green' scent: light, possibly young-ish, and likely a good spring-summer fragrance. Allure was a bit 'heavy', and Coco Mademoiselle was intriguing: it went on light and almost fruity; later it revealed the most exquisite base notes I'd ever sampled.

I sprayed those fragrances on sample cards and took them home to have a whiff later on for a second opinion.

I was definitely on to something here.

Body Chemistry: The "Pine Sol" Effect

Every scent is different on everyone because our body chemistry is unique to us individually. When a perfume smells enticingly good upon first whiff and suddenly converts into something resembling a household cleanser after spraying it on, that is what I dub the "Pine Sol" effect.

A classic example of the Pine Sol effect occurred when I was leafing through a fashion magazine that had a fragrance sample of the newly-released Ralph Laurent scent Notorious. Opening the tab, I breathed in a lovely, spicy-lemony scent and thought "I have got to try this one out, it's gorgeous!".

Sometime later I got a sample-sized bottle of Notorious, excitedly dabbed in on my wrists, and there it was: it smelled like Pine Sol on me - simply godawful. What a disappointment! I had to strike another potentially wonderful scent off the list because of incompatible chemistry. It's somewhat like dating, when what seems like a great match isn't. Far from it.

Next on the list of tryouts: the House of Chanel.

Tryouts

Just before Christmas I made an impulse buy - I cashed in all my Shoppers Drug Mart points and got a 10-fragrance sampler for $15 (regularly sells for $70). It also comes with a coupon to buy a full-sized bottle of the fragrance that I think is the nicest. Good deal, and these are the scents:
Marc Jacobs Daisy, and Lola
Givenchy Very Irresistible
Burberry The Beat
Avril Lavigne Black Star
Vera Wang Princess
Juicy Couture - Couture Couture
Calvin Klein Euphoria
Paco Rabanne Black XS
Hugo Boss - Boss Orange

This is going to be fun to try out the samples and see which one I ultimately select. Am kind of leaning towards Couture Couture, but the Marc Jacobs Lola bottle is an absolute work of art. Would I get it just for the bottle? No, but it's tempting. I've ruled out Princess as it's too young for me and I suspect Black XS is also in the same category.

Hello, Santa?

Dear Santa,

After much searching and experimenting, the following are 3 fragrances I would love to get for Christmas (not in order of importance):

1. Angel by Thierry Mugler
2. Daisy by Marc Jacobs
3. Essence by Narcisco Rodriguez

None of these fragrances is my signature fragrance, I am already using my second bottle of that one. They are all fairly new to the marketplace and have a few things in common.

First of all, the bottle: each is uniquely designed - Angel is sold in a blue eco-friendly glass star-shaped bottle which is refillable. Daisy has a leatherette flower attached to the bottle and is simple, yet very pretty. And Essence? It's in a unique mirrored bottle which gives it a contemporary look and really stands out among the plainer products like Chanel No. 5.

Secondly, the scents: Angel is strong, packs a whallop but it lasts and lasts for hours. A sales clerk in another store at the mall complimented me on it, so I know I can avoid the 'smells like an old ladies' closet' label because this scent suits me. Daisy has an amazing base note, is delicate and light, and I'm trying to figure out what's in it. And Essence....wow. This scent is absolutely drop dead gorgeous.

Despite being unemployed for much of 2009, I have been a really good girl this year, Santa. When I start to feel down about the lack of job prospects for a middle aged woman like myself, I spritz on perfume and it makes me feel happier. Not only does scent affect memory, it also affects moods by uplifting them - psychology in a bottle.

Thanks Santa, I feel better already.

The Search

By New Year's 2007, the search for the perfect new fragrance was well under way. One of the first perfumers I tried out was Dior. There were so many new scents from Dior on the market since I'd started wearing Miss Dior in the mid-1980''s: J'Adore, Dior Addict, Dior Addict 2, Miss Dior Cherie, and Poison to name a few.

Since one can't try too many scents on one's wrists and hands without confusing the nose to hell, I was pretty well limited to trying out about 4 scents at once, and spraying them on cards so I could remember what was what.

I started to get perfume samples while buying skin care products at Shoppers Drug Mart: Lovely by Sarah Jessica Parker, A Touch of Pink, Versace, Bvlgari Jasmine, Givency's Ange ou Demon and Very Irresistible were some of the fragrances tested at home. My scent judge, my teenage daughter, would give me the thumbs up or down on a fragrance: "That smells like the inside of an old lady's closet!" was her comment on Versace. It was obviously a scent more suited for more mature females; I liked it but it apparently didn't like me.

So far the top contenders were Dior Addict 2 and Bvlgari Jasmine. The latter was particularly soft and feminine, something I could probably wear to work and not set off allergic reactions. Light floral scents have always seemed to suit me the most. Overassertive, heavy-duty scents like Dior's Hypnotic Poison made me feel almost nauseous after a while. Definitely not the type of scent I could wear now that I was (well) past the nightclub-hopping age.

But I was just getting started. The signature scent would not be from Dior, but from another famous French perfume maker, or rather, infamous.

The Seventies

Anyone out there old enough to remember Love's Fresh Lemon from the 1970's? Back in 1972, it was the hottest thing since sliced bread for teenage girls. I would head off to school in platform shoes, cuffed bell bottom pants smelling like a lemonade stand. Was I cool or what?

Fruit-scented sprays were all the rage in the early 70's. I recall once wearing a strawberry-scented musk to school in Grade 11, and my mother taunting me with the strains of "Strawberry Fields Forever" as my scent and I marched out the front door.

Then Love's Baby Soft came out. The baby powder scent was a huge sensation to my age group and I adored its soft, subtle scent. Baby Soft would waft into a room instead of taking it over.

Love's Baby Soft is still around to this day, but I think the Fresh Lemon is long gone. At least, it's been many years since I've seen it in stores. I am tempted to head over to Walmart and buy a bottle of Baby Soft for the first time in decades. I can relive old memories of teen crushes, high school dances, hilarious fashions and a special friend from Norway who spent the summer with me in 1972, introduced me to Love's Fresh Lemon and remains a friend to this day.

Often life goes in circles; Love's Baby Soft brings back my inner 16-year old and a simpler, less hectic way of life. Sometimes I miss that.