I’m sure I’m not the only perfumista who has noticed how much harder it is to do a quick check for new fragrances at the local mall these days. It is no longer enough to scan the counters at the department stores — just about every boutique in the mall now has its own signature scent or line of scents, and there are more on the way. Coach, the American leather goods line, is the latest to jump on the bandwagon. Their signature perfume for women, Coach The Fragrance, launched earlier this spring.
Coach’s entry into the fragrance market is designed to “be all things to all people: worn on weekends, but also evenings; bright but romantic; aspirational yet approachable” (via pe.com) In other words, they’d like everybody to buy it. So how’d they do? Well, first off, I’d say they did beautifully on the packaging front (half the battle, no doubt). The Eau de Parfum bottle is classic but fun, the purse spray is cute, and that goes double for the solid perfume in the metal hangtag case…
Sometimes I wonder if my interest in perfume is a waste of time, or even immoral, given the turmoil of the world these days. I wonder if I should take the money I plow into perfume and send it to Mercy Corps instead. Why do I spend more time thinking about a good story or the smell of wood smoke than about the fate of the Endangered Species Act? Why do I spend part of each morning reading my favorite perfume blogs instead of reading The Nation?