Cosmetics giant Elizabeth Arden has reported a 25% drop in share prices and a worrying 28% fall in sales. It partly attributes its misfortune to the waning popularity of celebrity perfumes, notably its own offerings from Britney Spears, Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift. The dire figures have prompted financial pages to speculate that the age of the endorsed fragrance may be drawing to a close.
If only. Celebrity perfumes brought in £18bn worldwide in 2013 (£225m in the UK alone), a total boosted significantly by sales of One Direction's debut scent, Our Moment – officially the fasting-selling perfume of all time – which shocked the beauty industry not only by having a relatively tolerable smell, but also by outselling such iconic fragrances as Chanel No 5 and Christian Dior's Miss Dior last Christmas. (The Perfume Shop sold one bottle a minute over the festive period.) I was present at this year's Fragrance Foundation UK awards (known as "the Perfume Oscars") when Our Moment was announced as the winner of the evening's biggest award, beating "proper" perfume houses such as Giorgio Armani and Prada. To say the industry audience was openly stunned would be an understatement.
What's interesting about the disparity in fortunes is that current stardom may not be enough to clear shelves. Arden's top performer is Elizabeth Taylor, who died three years ago and whose fanbase hardly fits the teen demographic targeted by most celebrity licensing deals. Yet her White Diamonds line alone makes $54.9m a year. The explanation for this is arguably straightforward: Taylor's fragrances were carefully conceived and always good enough to stand on their own two feet, with or without her endorsement. The same has applied to some of Jennifer Lopez's better perfumes, which continue to sell in larger quantities than most of the more contemporary celebrity brands. In other words, Taylor and Lopez didn't need to be selling cinema tickets to make women want to wear their scents. Kylie's Darling and Madonna's Truth or Dare wouldn't have been so reliant on the singers' chart successes had they not been so wholly ghastly to the nose.
