At this point, I think we can all safely ignore news sources that tell us that the celebrity fragrance trend is over, no? And clearly, the days when a little personal trouble might hurt a celebrity’s market appeal are long gone; on the contrary, one might assume the more trouble the better — Paris Hilton, I suppose, qualifies as Exhibit A, although Britney Spears has certainly given her a run for the money (pardon the pun).

Britney’s latest entry, Hidden Fantasy, is the first celebrity scent to hit the perfume counters this year. It’s the second flanker to 2005’s Britney Spears Fantasy, the first being 2007’s Midnight Fantasy. My feelings about Fantasy are not all that different now than they were when I tried it shortly after its release:

Given that my expectations were low, I was pleasantly surprised. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I like it, but I don’t hate it, and if given the choice between this and say, Miss Dior Cherie, I would pick Fantasy.

At the time, I was just starting to explore celebrity fragrances; now that I’ve tried most of what’s been released over the past few years, I’ll qualify the above by noting that Fantasy is considerably better than much of the competition…

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