By Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 28, 2005; C01
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.
For the star, it's one more way to extend the brand; for the fragrance market, it's one more way to sell glamour and status. Some celebs stick their noses into the business. Sarah Jessica Parker, who reportedly has wanted her own perfume for 20 years, was quite involved in coming up with her scent. She's been promoting Lovely as if she's promoting another season of HBO's "Sex and the City."
Jan Moran, olfactory expert and author of "Fabulous Fragrances," says there are 138 celebrity fragrances in the world -- the most ever, she points out -- and all of them aim to become the next White Diamonds, the incredibly successful Elizabeth Taylor scent that has so far grossed more than $1 billion since it debuted in 1991.
"The more we see these celebrities out there -- in movies, in TV, in concerts, on the Internet, all around us -- the more we want to identify with them," says Moran.
Right. In other words, we don't want to smell like them, we want to be like them.
Steven Urban, a 27-year-old business analyst, took a whiff of Lopez's Live and thought it was Parker's Lovely. He sniffed another perfume and found it "very musky," "very strong," "not at all appealing."
"I can't picture a woman wearing this at all," snarled Urban, brows raised, with a look of utter disgust. It's Banderas's perfume, he guessed. He was wrong. It was Parker's.
" What?!? This is Lovely? This is not lovely. This is not Carrie Bradshaw," continued Urban, referring to Parker's character in "Sex and the City."
Nadia Naviwala, a 21-year-old senior at Georgetown University, mistook Lopez's smell for Banderas's. Either way, Lopez's Live "is not something I would wear," she said politely, lips pursed. Augusto Larios sniffed Spears's Fantasy and thought it was Ashanti's Precious Jewel. "Oh wow," he said. "But that smelled like Ashanti." What does Ashanti "smell like?" you ask him, and the 24-year-old answers with a blank stare.
Jason Carnes, also 21, was confused -- and with good reason. Coast to Coast, the Olsen twins' scent, comes in two bottles: the NYC one, pink, and the LA one, blue. If you can't even tell Mary-Kate from Ashley -- the brunette from the blonde, the very skinny from the skinny -- how are you suppose to differentiate the LA smell from the NYC smell? he asked. Point well taken.
Tracie Stewart is a self-described "perfume addict." She had no problem, none at all, matching the scent with the celebrity. Like her friend Keiyana Leake, who's also very much into perfumes, she got it right with Lopez, Spears, Ashanti et al. ("Well, Ashanti can't sing," snapped Leake, 21, a grant specialist. "But her perfume smells nice -- she should stick with the perfume business.")
"Oh God, you don't wanna know," Stewart said when asked how many perfumes she has at home. "It's like handbags," she replied with a nervous giggle. She owns Still by Lopez, Lovely by Parker and Baby Phat Goddess by Simmons, the notoriously high-maintenance wife of hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons.
"You know I actually cringed when I bought Baby Phat 'cuz I don't like her. I don't like her personality. Sooo arrogant," said Stewart, a 33-year-old financial manager. "That's the reason why I didn't buy Paris Hilton's perfume, even though I liked the smell. Anyway, it's weird, I know. You of course think about the celebrity when you buy her perfume, but, at the same time, you don't really want to think about her and her smell. Does that make any sense?"
Sure, it makes lots of scents.