Celeb Sniff & Scratch Test

Many Stars Are Peddling Scents. But Does Eye Candy Really Smell Like That?

We can't turn up our noses at celebrity fragrances. They're omnipresent, like the blue-vested greeter at Wal-Mart -- where, incidentally, R&B songstress Ashanti's perfume is exclusively sold. Yes, even Ashanti has a perfume, she dared call it Precious Jewel, and some of us got it for Christmas.

There's also Lovely by Sarah Jessica Parker, Fantasy by Britney Spears, Spirit for Women by Antonio Banderas, Baby Phat Goddess by Kimora Lee Simmons, Coast to Coast NYC and LA by the bicoastal Olsen twins, and Donald Trump's cologne, The Fragrance -- not just a fragrance but the fragrance. Very Trump. Jennifer Lopez's fourth perfume in three years, the recently launched Live, is not to be confused with Glow, Miami Glow and Still, which collectively brought in more than $100 million last year, according to the folks at NPD Beauty, who study these things.

But what, exactly, does J.Lo smell like? Sexy, voluptuous, Latinized? With a bit of "Gigli," a splash of "Jenny From the Block" and a lingering waft of P. Diddy, then Ben Affleck, then Marc Anthony? Would we recognize it?

More to the point: Can we -- the ever-so-discriminating consumers, many of us star-obsessed -- rightly match the scent with the celebrity?

With bottles of the aforementioned fragrances in hand, we headed over to Ballston Common Mall on a recent afternoon to ask random passersby that burning question. They gamely whiffed, sniffed and puffed -- with some "wows" and "ewws" thrown in for good measure.

Most were just plain wrong. A few got it right. Some got downright nasty.

"Is this Britney's? It is , huh?" asked Ginny Gettemeier, 28, a communications manager. She guessed right. "It smells slutty. It smells cheap. It smells like the stuff I wore in fifth grade." She used to wear Electric Youth by Debbie Gibson.

Gettemeier's gal pal, Kelly Scheuneman, a staffing adviser, snuffled. "It smells juvenile," said the 39-year-old.

They laughed.

A few minutes earlier, a very dapper Stephan Petry, with a face like the Marlboro Man's but dressed like the manager of a lobbying firm that he is, smelled The Fragrance and correctly identified it with Trump, but not for the reasons Trump might wish.

"It's not masculine enough. It smells kind of fruity," Petry explained. Then the 57-year-old deadpanned: "But it doesn't smell like money."

The bottled scent of a celebrity is the hot trend in the multibillion-dollar global fragrance industry. In 2000, celebrity fragrances accounted for 2 percent of the market in the United States, according to NPD Beauty. These days, it's 6 percent. It's the Paris Hilton effect: I'm a somebody, so I can have a fragrance just because . Country superstar Shania Twain has one, as does soccer icon David Beckham. Actor Alan Cumming has one, too, called Cumming, if you know who Alan Cumming is.