The sweet smell of celebrity perfumes

Nowadays, you can bottle fame and what’s more — it’s a huge earner for the top stars. Louise O’Neill reports on big-money scent endorsement

ACCORDING to Stephen C Mormoris, the senior vice-president of global marketing at Coty Inc, “Celebrities are cultural icons and they are often beautiful, accomplished, wealthy and sexy — all dreams that consumers project themselves into if they are wearing that celebrity’s personal fragrance.”

Using celebrities to hawk perfume to the masses is nothing new. In the 1930s, Elsa Schiaparelli designed a perfume bottle to emulate Mae West’s famous curves; Hubert de Givenchy capitalised on his indelible association with Audrey Hepburn by creating the bespoke fragrance L’Interdit in her honour, and in 1954 Chanel discovered the power of celebrity when Marilyn Monroe said she wore ‘five drops of Chanel No 5’ to bed.