It seems like there was a whole spate of articles not too long ago proclaiming that celebrity fragrances were “over”, they weren’t selling any more, etc. etc. If there is any truth to the notion, you won’t find the evidence at the fragrance counters this month. Mariah Carey is only the latest of celebrity fragrance debuts, and if you mean to smell them all, you’ve a long road ahead of you yet this year.

Mariah Carey went with the name M. It isn’t wildly creative on its own merits, and it seems even less so given that we just got L from Gwen Stefani. Are full words too risky in today’s over-saturated fragrance market? What will happen when all the letters of the alphabet are used up? We’ve already got F (Ferragamo), another L (Lolita Lempicka), S (Scherrer), V (Valentino), XX (Hugo Boss), and probably others that aren’t coming to mind at the moment.

The M fragrance itself was developed by perfumers Carlos Benaim and Loc Dong, and is advertised as a floriental…

Read the rest of this article »