When it was revealed (reportedly much to her outrage) that Rihanna’s famously good signature scent was in fact Kilian’s Love, Don’t Be Shy – a heady trail that celebrates the all-consuming emotion of passionate love – a whole new generation discovered the game-changing gourmand perfume for the first time, 15 years after its debut as one of the fragrance house's first five launches. In fact, it's not unusual for Rihanna's star power to send demand for a scent surging: Maison Francis Kurkdjian's Baccarat Rouge 540 has been enjoying a similar resurgence since she gave it her seal of approval.
— Read more in History of the Hero: Kilian Love, Don't Be Shy at Harper's Bazaar.
Hello Robin,
I can’t believe that she’s this naive or uninformed.
I used to work in a perfumers lab and the requests were almost all the same. Ex : we would like a perfume that smells like Trésor but different too. So what do perfumers do ? They have the formula ready, thanks to chromatography (see Christophe Laudamiel @fragrance.drama ) and they duplicate it adjusting a few details here and there.
It’s extremely rare those days to find a fragrance, especially in mainstream, that’s truly an original. I think the last time I smelled something original and different from all the fruity floral gourmand in the mainstream category was Mémoire d’une odeur by Gucci. Though I still wonder why they picked up a name that is probably unpronounceable for non French spoken people ?
I think we all remember the Angel/Nirmala story. Because Molinard used an old name, some people thought that Angel was a copy !!!
My friend, the perfumer Jeannine Mongin, once told me when I asked about so many identical perfumes that most people had no clue and some even probably had never heard about the original !!!
I figured she’d be annoyed because she’d want people to think she was wearing one of her own fragrances, so she’d not want it publicized that she wore something else readily available.
But I also didn’t take “reportedly much to her outrage” all that seriously.
My bad, at first I thought that one of her own perfumes smelled like Love, don’t be shy.
Well, Elizabeth Taylor wore Bal à Versailles and Chanel N•5. Maybe hers as well. Who knew ? Except her close entourage.
Maybe it does smell like it, I don’t know!