Discover the History behind Celebrity Perfumes

Many people feel that the current proliferation of celebrity endorsed perfumes lining the shelves of our perfumeries are somewhat of a recent phenomenon. The 2002 Coty scent ‘Glow' by Jennifer "J-Lo" Lopez is often credited with kick-starting the trend but in actual fact celebrity fragrances have been going for a lot longer than that. This article aims to look at the history of the celebrity fragrance and highlight some of the more noticeable entries from the last 50 years.



While it is undeniable that the sheer quantity of "celebrity" fragrances that are currently on sale is far in excess of what has previously been available the trend has actually been common since the 1950's.



Like much in the perfume industry the roots of this phenomenon can be traced back to France, where celebrities of the day (such as Jean Louis Trintignant) such as would team up with famous perfume houses to create signature scents. But it was Givenchy's pairing with Audrey Hepburn in the 50's that was the most notable example. Over the next 30 years a number of celebrity perfumes were launched (from the like of Sophia Lauren, Omar Shariff and Andy Warhol) which despite not reaching the market dominance that celebrity perfumes have nowadays proved to be extremely popular.



The 1980's seen a spike in celebrity fragrances starting with the infamous ‘White Diamonds' from Elizabeth Taylor. At this point many perfumers realised that while it was a difficult task to build a new perfume brand from scratch the process could be considerably sped up by launching it on the back of a famous personality's name. Despite this boom in the late 80's celebrity names fragrances declined in popularity continually through the 90's as designers fragrances (from brands such as Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren) became dominant. This brings us full circle to 2002 when Coty decided to team up with the pop star Jennifer Lopez to create a new fragrance which was so successful a huge quantity of perfumers followed suit resulting in the prevalence of celebrity perfumes available today. The recent glut of celebrity perfumes does have its benefits however as many of them are made with the nose of a professional perfumer yet they are often available at the same price as discount perfume providing customers with budget alternatives to designer fragrances (such as Hugo Boss Perfume).