Once I was 13, I used to be invited over to my friend’s house to smell Taylor Swift’s Wonderstruck, a perfume she had received for Christmas and which I, unfortunately, had not. It wasn’t only a fragrance. It was, as per its ethereal commercial that had Swift prancing in a field, “the start of something magical”. That perfume constructed a fantasy, one with hints of vanilla and peach, that made me feel as if I could conjure up Speak Now-era Taylor Swift herself, and all I needed was a shiny purple bottle to do it. Since then, Swift has marketed the whole lot from cardigans to Christmas baubles – but none have felt as exciting to me as that one whiff of Wonderstruck. 

Fragrance has the ability to move you to a distinct moment, real or imagined. Add within the fantasy that a star can evoke, and also you’ve got the recipe for pure magical escapism. The primary celebrity fragrances began emerging within the Nineteen Eighties, however it’s generally agreed that it was Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds in 1991 which really launched the phenomenon. A sheer floral fragrance, a bottle of White Diamonds is sold every 15 seconds, and by 2018 had generated $1.5 billion. “I at all times desired to have the option to attach with people in ways apart from through film,” Taylor told Kim Kardashian in 2011. “I had no concept that White Diamonds would change into a classic after we began, but I’m thrilled it has since it means we now have really succeeded in giving women a little bit little bit of luxury every single day.”

Taylor paved the way in which for perfumes like Glow by JLo and Curious by Britney Spears to rake in tons of of tens of millions of dollars, and within the early 2000s it seemed every star on the planet had a fragrance, from One Direction and Justin Bieber to Mary-Kate and Ashley. With aggressively sweet scents, fluorescent colors, flimsy heart-shaped bottle caps and badly photoshopped commercial campaigns, these perfumes were maximalist, decadent fun. But then, sometime around 2011, the mood modified and tastes shifted to more minimalist, area of interest brands like Le Labo and Byredo; playful, vibrant bottles swapped for stripped-back designs with easy packaging and functional fonts.

At the identical time, social media emerged in full force, changing the accessibility and, thus, the allure of fame endlessly. Platforms like Instagram gave the general public access to each facet of celebrities’ lives, and fans not needed the illusion of closeness that perfume offered. Authenticity and reality became the currency of the day, replacing fantasy (perfume) with aspiration (digestive supplements). It’s as if we’ve deluded ourselves into considering that if we buy celebrity products, we are able to live like them too. If we buy Kim Kardashian’s nine-step SKKN routine, we’ll have skin like hers. If we buy SKIMS, we’ll have a body like hers.

There’s also the KKW perfume, which – reasonably than being a fun, maximalist fantasy – felt like a far more serious spin on celebrity fragrance. “The KKW fragrance was certainly one of Kim K’s first big products,” says Kardashian scholar, MJ Corey who runs Kardashian Kolloquium on Instagram. “The bottle embodied Kim K, sending a message to its consumers that in the event that they wore the fragrance, sprayed from a precise forged of her literal body, they’ve an actual a part of her.” The Kardashians have capitalised on their parasocial relationship with the web, branching out into infinite ventures that sell you an unattainable dream. But as a billion-dollar empire, the Kardashians’ attempts at relatability just aren’t believable and, as Elizabeth Renstrom who runs Basenote Bitch says, they verge on harmful. “There’s something less insidious about one other fruity floral to the market promising salvation, than a selling me something they know won’t bring everlasting youth without the extra proximity to wealth.” 

In a sea of supplements and skincare lines, the true excitement and the fantasy of fame have disappeared. Celebrities have been banking on authenticity to maintain us enticed. But we don’t need that – we’d like fantasy, nostalgia and dreams! Gaudy, dopamine-driven aesthetics and Y2K nostalgia are coming back full throttle in fashion and make-up, and now it’s time for it to come back to perfume. “I feel our relationship to celebrity has modified, but I do think the style and notes typical of celebrity fragrance are making a comeback again,” Renstrom says.

The past few years might need allowed for perfumes like Santal 33 and Gypsy Water to thrive – and to be fair, they do smell incredible – but times are changing. The celebrity comeback has been slow, regular and sickly sweet. The opposite night, a friend told me she was wearing a sugary Billie Eilish fragrance at dinner. Dolly Parton’s floral debut perfume Scent from Above broke records in 2021, and Rihanna launched a much-anticipated celebrity fragrance via Fenty that very same yr. Up to now, nonetheless, just one new-era celebrity fragrance has truly cemented itself as a classic, with rave reviews from perfume die-hards and stans alike: Ariana Grande’s Cloud. 

A blue, cloud-shaped perfume with notes of marshmallow and coconut, Cloud has the whole lot someone craving for the nostalgia of the early 00s could dream of. And while some have attributed its hype to its similarity with Baccarat Rouge 540, Renstrom believes it’s greater than only a dupe. Branding it as such “dismissed its uniqueness as a star fragrance,” she argues, saying that “it’s led the charge back to our desire for sweet gourmands again.” 

Our favourite celebrities are those that don’t appear to be selling you anything but escapism. We all know that we are able to’t afford to seem like them or dress like them. But fragrance unlocks something else, an aura of fame that MJ Corey describes as a “cheat code to make closeness with them feel more accessible.” Ultimately, we still want the celebrity dream, one which our increasingly online world appears to be diluting daily. So, to any celebrity who’s desperately trying to seek out one other option to make some money, might I suggest a fun fruity scent in a unusual bottle that we are able to display on our countertops – the gaudier, the higher.

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