Fashion : Celebrities Waft Into Fragrance Field

On Tuesday, Mikhail Baryshnikov makes his first personal appearance at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. Note the choreography: cocktails Monday night for 300--Kevin Costner, Kim Basinger, like that--in a $14-million penthouse on Wilshire Boulevard. Caviar and California Chardonnay abound.

Next day at the store, an autographing session from 1 to 2, with models spritzing perfume into the expected crowd of 1,000 and Baryshnikov signing his name in indelible ink.

All this because the ballet star, whose stage leaps made him famous, is taking yet another leap--into the world of fragrance. He is lending his name and his image to a $185-an-ounce perfume called Misha, his nickname.

His gala fragrance launch follows close behind one for screen star Jaclyn Smith, whose California eau de cologne is a budget-conscious $17.50 per ounce. Because she has not been able to make time for personal appearances on the West Coast, K mart, Sav-on and JC Penney are promoting the scent in their stores by replacing Smith with life-size, cardboard dolls. And they will continue to do so until the real thing comes along. But her schedule doesn’t allow for store appearances anytime soon. For now, the dolls will be as close as fans get to the former Charlie’s Angel.

Sizzles and Fizzles

Smith’s 2-D look-alike is a symbol of one of the major problems plaguing celebrity fragrance sales. When stars are in stores meeting the public, scent sales sizzle. When they’re not, sales tend to fizzle. And lately, there’s more fizzle than sizzle.

But that hasn’t stopped the push to get more eau-de-star on cosmetic counters. Baryshnikov and Smith join a long list of media celebs who have endorsed a fragrance.

Recently there have been Cher, Joan Collins, Priscilla Presley and Debbie Gibson. Earlier, Elizabeth Taylor, Linda Evans, Catherine Deneuve, Dionne Warwick, Marlo Thomas, Sophia Loren and Candice Bergen. And Baryshnikov is not alone among men to introduce a fragance for women. Herb Alpert, Julio Iglesias and Smokey Robinson are others.

The fact that none of these performers knew how to make or market a perfume was inconsequential to executives in the fragrance industry. The stars draw crowds and crowds mean dollars--at least initially. Max Factor President Allan Kurtzman predicts that Jaclyn Smith’s California will generate about $50 million in sales its first year, of which the actress will get an undisclosed percentage. With Smith on hand to smile and sign autographs during its summertime “launch” week at Bloomingdale’s in New York--the only U.S. department store to carry it--5,000 bottles were purchased. But like other celebrity scents, with the star off premises, the fragrance became just another of the more than 800 different brands available.

Crowds Follow Cher

Cher’s recent seven-city tour with Uninhibited made the $175-an-ounce scent a hot seller during that time. She was able to draw huge crowds to department stores wherever she appeared. But as her film schedule and private life became more demanding, the personal appearances dwindled. Cher’s scent proved to be one that her fans bought out of reverence for her, and others bought for curiosity’s sake. But few came back for more.

Certainly the price tag keeps some fans from buying more than one bottle. Smith’s California cologne at $17.50 is uncharacteristically low. But even her perfume, sold only at Bloomingdale’s, is $200 per ounce. Others are priced as high as $300, which doesn’t make repeat business a sure thing.

“For some manufacturers, short-term sales are enough,” explains Bill Fitzgerald, a Washington-based economist who tracks fragrance sales for the industry. “Whereas most major firms want to see sales of $50 million a year to call a fragrance successful, some companies are happy with $10 million or $20 million a year in sales. Others are in and out fast--they do a big business during the launch period and then take the money and run.”

Even sales of Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion, considered by most industry observers to be a major success, are tapering off. “Passion traded heavily on Taylor’s name and ads in the magazines,” Fitzgerald says. “Now the company has introduced bath products to generate more interest, but what they need is Taylor out there stumping to keep up the excitement.”

Sustaining that excitement is no easy feat, however. Loren’s Sophia and Bergen’s Cie were introduced more than 10 years ago, the first celebrity tie-ins in the perfume business. Today Cie is no longer available and “it takes a magnifying glass to find Sophia,” as one industry consultant put it.

So far only Passion, Deneuve and Evans’ Krystal have been considered successful fragrances by industry analysts. But even Deneuve was a relatively short-term hit.

With expensive packaging that included bows hand-dyed in France, “Deneuve was too expensive to produce,” observes another industry source, who refused to be identified. “It would need to be $300 a bottle to make any money. So when Cher came along, everyone forgot about Deneuve.”

Deneuve Is Scarce

The French actress’ $175 perfume can still be found in some department stores, such as Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom.

Evans’ high profile on the TV show “Dynasty,” coupled with her commercial endorsements of Crystal Light soft drinks and Clairol’s Ultress hair-coloring products, enhanced sales of her perfume. Now that “Dynasty” has been canceled, sales of Krystal will be based on the consumers’ response to the essence, the true test of a fragrance’s long-term success.

Like Smith’s scent, Collins’ Spectacular was launched at Bloomingdale’s during the store’s recent California promotion. She drew fewer people to the store than did Smith, and sales have been notably unspectacular. According to Fitzgerald, who monitors actual consumer purchasing of name brands by contacting the shoppers, Collins’ fragrance has not yet registered on his charts because of its very limited distribution. The fragrance is now available in Los Angeles at the Broadway, where Collins will make a personal appearance Nov. 9 (the Glendale Galleria store) and 10 (the South Coast Plaza store).

Men Bank on Charisma

Male stars, anxious to get in on the action, bank on their romantic charisma to sell fragrances for women. The industry turns to sensitive male images, including that of Baryshnikov, to attract fragrance-buying females.

Known for his soulful music, Smokey Robinson will sell his Smoke fragrance by mail, promoting it via scent strips distributed at his concerts and in his albums. The price is $29.50 for 1.7 ounces of eau de parfum, which is stronger than a cologne. Robinson isn’t offering a perfume at this time.

Madrid-born Iglesias, marketing specifically to Hispanic women, plays up the romantic angle in publicity for his scent Only, when he intones, “For all that women have given me, I wanted to give them something in return; something that would speak intimately to each and every woman the world over.” It will cost them $200 per ounce.

Baryshnikov, on the other hand, is promoted as the consummate artist, and his artistic sense is at the heart of the campaign: “Fragrance is like an ‘internal’ companion, the bridge connecting a woman’s hidden emotional self with the visual self . . . a kind of emotional dance.”

Until recently, pop musician Herb Alpert’s Listen was sold in too few stores to make an appearance on Fitzgerald’s national sales reports. Now, sold in 300 stores, enough to make a retail impact, its true popularity will be tested. Alpert’s personal-appearance schedule has been very limited.

While the French and Italians are accustomed to fragrances by celebrity fashion designers, entertainment industry scents are an American anachronism. In Paris, where perfume is as much a part of its heritage as wine, food or fashion, the nose--the man or woman who blends the fragrance--is most often the media star. For example, when the House of Guerlain launches its new perfume, Samsara, this fall, nose Jean-Paul Guerlain will tour the world to discuss his newest essence.

And when Annick Goutal, one of the few female noses to head a French perfume company, began selling her exclusive collection at Bergdorf Goodman in New York and I. Magnin here, it was she, not 15 fragrances, that was promoted.

Credit to Creator

“I could never create a perfume and then attach a celebrity’s name to it,” says Goutal, who received substantial media attention when she sued Parfums International, maker of Taylor’s fragrance, for using the name Passion, which she had trademarked and used for several years on one of her best-selling perfumes. “The scent would be my interpretation of the star, not the star’s expression of herself. To put a movie star’s name on a fragrance is a vulgarization--the credit belongs to the original creator.”

In the United States, such “vulgarization” continues with no end in sight. But the trend is not without limits.

So far there is no Rambo’s Girl by Sylvester Stallone, or Terminator for Women by Arnold Schwarzenegger, because the actors’ images don’t fit the sensitive, romantic mold that has proven to be successful. Nor is there a Madonna perfume in the works.

“Her personal life is too stormy,” one industry source explains. “No manufacturer is willing to take a chance that the public will want to smell like her.”