In honor of yesterday’s FiFi fragrance awards, please indulge me for a moment.  I would like to send a plea to perfumers (or more accurately, to the beauty conglomerate executives who greenlight this nonsense in penthouse boardrooms above Fifth Avenue) to stop being so damn lazy with their fragrances.  Season after season, scent lovers are bombarded not only with inane EDPs from celebrities that have no business “creating” juices, but also with updated, slightly tweaked versions of old perfumes saddled with names just like! but different from! the original.  Loved Stella McCartney?  Hey, try Stella McCartney Sheer Stella!  Were you a fan of Givenchy Very Irresistible?  Try the Givenchy Very Irresistible Givenchy Summer Cocktail!  Not really a fan of the apple-and-mandarin candied scent of the original Ralph?  Maybe you’ll like Ralph Rocks!  Or Ralph Cool!  What about Ralph Hot?  Ralph Wild?  Ralph Insanity?  (Yeah, I made that one up.)

Glance at the Sephora website, and every one of the eight perfumes featured on their homepage are also-ran summer updates.  Carolina Herrera 212 Splash, DKNY Charmingly Delicious, Issey Miyake L’Eau d’Issey Summer…you get the picture.  Some of these tweaked fragrances can indeed smell fabulous, don’t get me wrong; hell, one of my all-time favorite scents is Chanel Coco Mademoiselle, which is of course a lighter, more youthful version of the bestseller Chanel Coco.  (Then again, Coco Mademoiselle has been around over a decade and become an iconic scent in its own right.)  But when every single company releases “light” or “fresh” or “sheer” versions of their hits like clockwork…as a fragrance lover, it makes me angry.  Then companies wonder why fragrance sales are down, and why the industry is in an uproar?  It’s not rocket science: we’re saturated.  We’re tired.  We’re over it.  Fragrance isn’t cheap, and it’s deeply personal; your perfume should tell a story, evoke memories, cocoon your skin to feel uniquely “you.”  I dream of another where-did-that-come-from rock star bursting on the scene like Thierry Mugler Angel, which I don’t even personally like—but at least it was original!

Tags: Chanel, Coco Mademoiselle, perfume

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 11:37 am and is filed under FRAGRANCE. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

2 Responses to “Fragrance makers of the world, stop being so damn lazy”

1. Beauty's Spot Says:
   May 22nd, 2008 at 6:35 am

   Amen. My only refuge is at the Memorie Liquid Bespoke Perfumery at Bendels or Fred Segal.

2. Kristen Says:
   May 22nd, 2008 at 10:25 am

   I’m so with you Nadine!
   my God, Ralph Wild is really disgusting, by the way…

   great to meet you at the Summit!
   

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