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What goes into a celebrity fragrance?

Do celebrities actually help create their signature fragrances?

I'd heard that vast labs exist, where you can walk in and browse the shelves of thousands of perfumes, sniffing each until you find one you want to brand and sell. You then buy that scent from the lab/company, and resell it - perhaps always paying the creator a share, or buying it outright.

So I assumed this would be the case with celebrity perfumes. But I've read contradictory accounts. I did read, as you might expect, that celebrities have nothing to do with choosing their scent; at the most they might be given a couple to choose between once contenders had been picked. I actually think this is the least that has to happen - whilst I'm no perfume expert, I wouldn't put my name to something that I didn't like! I couldn't sit in TV interviews, promoting something I wouldn't wear myself. So I was going to give celebs at least credit for airing their opinion.

But I've since read that they can be very involved in the process. Danielle Steele apparently claims on her website: “Creating the fragrance was very much a team effort, blending the inspiration of many people, how they perceive me and how I perceive both my readers and the world I try to create with my books.” And Sarah Jessica Parker apparently has a 'very good nose' which was crucial in devloping Lovely.

Do we believe the publicity? If you're buying a celeb perfume, then you're buying into them - their brand - probably because you're a fan, and so you probably do want to think they had something to do with the process. I appreciate Kylie's very busy, but when I see her endorsing Darling, I would like to believe she had something to do with it - as she has such a reputation for being just that, darling - and when something is so intertwined with a persona, it would seem very wrong if it was completely fabricated by a marketing agency. Meanwhile, for different reasons I do think that Katie Price (Jordan) probably does have quite a lot to do with her perfume creations such as Stunning as she does often come across as a very hard-nosed - or at least savvy - business woman. She's always got a new range or product to promote, and always says there's so much more she wants to do, and so many more ideas are in the pipe line. I can actually quite believe that she plans her world domination, including perfumes and home furnishings, whilst riding her horses and going about her daily life. And at the other end of the scale again is Kate Moss - she might be a style icon, but I'm not convinced she'd drag herself into fragrance-tone choosing sessions for her perfume Kate, or even into the Topshop studios for her collection. She gives the impression she's far too busy leading a rock and roll lifestyle.

So whilst I think it's about the image, do some people just buy celeb perfumes purely because of how they smell? I read one review from a perfume-buyer who'd just bought Paris Hilton's Just Me, but claimed she couldn't stand the model/pin-up/'it-girl'. So was it just the scent that she liked?

This was interesting because it contradicted claims by expert perfumiers, that celeb perfumes sell well because they're cheap, due to machine-led creation techniques, as apposed to the traditional - and more costly - distilling methods. This can mean they don't have the same depths and layers of scents, and 'all smell the same'!

But, none the less, the boom in celebrity fragrances is to thank for bringing people under the age of 40 to the perfume counters. Figures state that celebrity frangrance is the fastest growing segment of the fragrance industry, and in America in 2005 acounted for 23 of the top 100 fragrances being sold, as opposed to 10% in 2003. (Figures from the NPD group.)