Dollars and Scents : Fashion: In the perfume game, a celebrity’s image may mean the sweet smell of success--but not always.

Lips are sealed as to what actually happened in that out-of-court settlement between Elizabeth Taylor and her onetime boyfriend, Henry Wynberg. But some perfume pundits suggest that Liz should have given Henry a generous settlement for all the free publicity her lawsuit and his countersuit generated for her best-selling fragrance just as the holiday season kicked into high gear.

Indeed, the dispute over who got what profits and just who concocted the floral scent seemed as if it could have been devised by a diabolically clever advertising team. Lurid sexual histories, greed and long-dead passions were splashed across front pages of newspapers across America generating name recognition that publicists drool over.

“Given that it’s a few weeks before Christmas, the timing is extraordinary,” sighed Lawrence Pesin, whose firm, Colonia, puts out a celebrity fragrance called “Moments,” personified by Priscilla Presley. Analysts say the fragrance industry rakes in about half its $4 billion in sales during the December shopping frenzy.

With eyes of violet and a perfume bottle to match, Liz is reigning comfortably over the celebrity scent market with $70 million in annual sales from the fragrance she launched with Chesebrough-Ponds in 1987. (Two years later she added Elizabeth Taylor’s “Passion for Men.”)

But a host of other celebrity scents with such coy names as “Only,” “Misha,” “Moments,” “Listen,” “California,” “Spectacular,” “Sophia,” “Deneuve,” “Forever Krystle,” “Electric Youth,” “Undeniable” and “Uninhibited” are now jockeying for space on the increasingly crowded shelves of department stores and drugstores and even in the satchels of door-to-door Avon ladies.

Overkill, you might ask?

Not on your life, say most distributors, who add that as long as American women have ears, they will yearn to dab the newest celebrity perfumes behind them.

There are 800 fragrances on the market and 60 new scents debut annually. But with six out of seven failing, and fragrance sales down 40% this holiday season, celebrities offer perfume manufacturers an invaluable cachet-by-association in an industry that hawks hope by the pricey half-ounce.

Celebrity scents are most successful when a host of intangible and mundane variables come together, including the star’s image, the way that image is promoted in an attempt to strike an emotional chord with the buying public, relentless in-store appearances with all the trappings of a three-ring circus and lastly, a pleasing “juice,” as scents are known in the industry.

Besides “Passion,” “Jaclyn Smith’s California,” Priscilla Presley’s “Moments” and Mikhail Baryshnikov’s “Misha” are some of the success stories cited by analysts.

But celebrity scents can belly-flop when even one variable veers out of orbit. Cher’s “Uninhibited,” Joan Collins’ “Spectacular” and Catherine Deneuve’s “Deneuve” show that star quality does not necessarily ensure a successful perfume. Analysts say all three were potential mega-sellers whose marketing campaigns failed to capture the imagination and pocketbooks of the fickle public.

The complicated tango that brings stars and fragrances together varies with each set of players. Contact is often initiated by manufacturers, who present marketing proposals and vie with each other to make a deal. But celebrities are often just waiting for a good opportunity to license their names.

Some are content to adopt a laissez-faire attitude and leave the fragrance testing to the experts, collecting a licensing fee and customary royalties of 3% to 5%. Others shudder at slapping their name across a product they haven’t personally supervised, tested and approved.

Ballet dancer, choreographer and actor Mikhail Baryshnikov, for instance, whose women’s fragrance “Misha” has enjoyed success, insisted on creative control over all details from the design of the bottle--a conical shape suggesting twirling, or perhaps a pirouette--to the packaging, marketing and the scent itself, according to Richard Barrie, president and chairman of Richard Barrie Fragrances Inc., a small perfume marketer in New York.

Baryshnikov received $250,000 last year for putting his name on the fragrance. He is guaranteed an annual licensing fee that increases to $750,000 by 1995, according to reports. Barrie, who spent 23 years with Faberge before launching his own firm, said he wooed the ballet star for months, winning a commitment by promising to start a company devoted to the fragrance.

Credited in the fragrance industry with running a shrewd marketing campaign, Barrie expects $7 million in retail sales for 1990, recouping his $4 million in initial promotional costs.

“We weren’t looking for big dollars. We were looking for a foothold and an opportunity to grow and establish a world-class brand that . . . in 10 years will be a classic,” he says.

Some public relations departments go to great lengths to paint their celebrities as people of infinite creativity who spend months tracking down the elusive blend of orangeflower, patchouli, sandalwood, gardenia, jasmine and ylang-ylang that will make the public swoon.

“Jaclyn was involved in every step of the process,” says a press release by Max Factor for “Jaclyn Smith’s California,” which also quotes the actress: “My new fragrance has the freshness of flowers and warm wood undertones. It’s very sensuous, but with California’s lively sparkle.” The perfume debuted in April, 1989, and sales were in excess of $50 million in the first year.

Billy Dee Williams, whose fast-moving fragrance “Undeniable” is sold door-to-door by Avon Products and is expected to pull in $22 million in sales this year, was not involved in creating the scent, according to Evette O. Beckett, Avon’s director of fragrance marketing.

“We pretty much led the project ourselves,” she adds. “Of course, we reviewed it with him and he was pleased with it. But he didn’t necessarily have approval.”

Sometimes scents can backfire even when celebrities participate in the entire process. Cher’s “Uninhibited,” manufactured by a subsidiary of Avon Products called Parfums Stern, shows how easily star fragrances can turn into stinkers.

“Don’t quote me, but it bombed,” sniffs one competitor of the scent, whose bottle mixes Art Deco and heavy-metal hardware. The flash is capped by an opaque plastic seashell nestled in a studded metal crescent moon--but it has disappeared from most department stores.

“The fragrance and the packaging didn’t work at all,” says Annette Green of the Fragrance Foundation in New York. “Cher is a sexy, opinionated woman and I don’t think the marketing campaign conveyed that. I mean, what does Cher have to do with Art Deco?”

To be sure, purchases zoomed whenever Cher made in-store appearances. Salesclerks dutifully doled out chain-mail earrings with each purchase to evoke outfits worn by the well-sculpted star, and sales were $15 million in 1988. But sales tapered after Cher stopped stumping for “Uninhibited,” and analysts say the fragrance did less than $10 million in sales last year.

Considering that the scent may have outsold Barishnikov’s, is that so bad?

“That was a brand they had high expectations for a certain size market and longevity,” says Susan Babinsky, a market analyst who tracks the fragrance industry for the Kline Group in New Jersey.

In March, Sanofi Beauty Products, which bought Parfums Stern from Avon this year, put “Uninhibited” on the auction block, and industry analysts say Cher bought back the distribution rights and is shopping for a new distributor.

“Cher felt that it would not be fair to ask (her fans) to continue to buy a perfume that did not live up to her quality standards,” her publicist said in a prepared statement. “Cher maintains that Parfums Stern did not live up to its initial promises regarding the packaging, marketing and distribution.”

Another scent that nose-dived was “Deneuve,” named after classically beautiful blond actress Catherine Deneuve and distributed by Avon Products. Women apparently were put off by Deneuve’s ice-queen look and the scent evaporated alongside Avon’s profits.

In contrast, Cheseborough Ponds’ research into the popularity of Elizabeth Taylor indicated the actress’s romantic, schmaltzy image and her series of personal misfortunes inspired awe as well as empathy in men and women of all ages, sexes and colors. Almost everyone could relate to Liz on some level, from her well-publicized marriages and love affairs to bouts with substance abuse and illness, charity work and lifelong battle with weight.

“People love Liz, they feel protective of her. She’s the last great star,” says the Fragrance Foundation’s Green.

She is also a great target, analysts say. Wynberg’s suit was the second one filed over her perfume. Several years ago, Parisian perfumer Annick Goutal sued Taylor for using the name “Passion,” which Goutal had trademarked and used for one of her own best-selling perfumes. La Liz’s fragrance--which her publicist said she was intimately involved in selecting and marketing--is now known officially as “Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion.”

Squeaky-clean teen singer Debbie Gibson’s “Electric Youth,” which did a brisk $15 million in sales last year, illustrates that perfumes don’t need universal appeal to succeed.

“Electric Youth” comes in a hot-pink half-ounce bottle ($8.50 per half-ounce) and smells like strawberry bubble gum. Gibson’s teen-age fans have spritzed themselves silly on the stuff and Revlon tied in marketing to Gibson’s 1989 “Electric Youth” album, which sold 4 million copies.

Some advertising ploys seem downright hokey. When Jaclyn Smith couldn’t make some of the in-store appearances that Max Factor had scheduled for her “lifestyle” fragrance “Jaclyn Smith’s California,” the firm put up life-size cardboard cut-outs instead.

And some press agents get carried away, too. A spokeswoman for “Undeniable” by Billy Dee Williams suggests that the perfume bottle “is very curvaceous. It sort of reminds you of a woman.”

“Billy Dee is not just a pretty face,” she says. “He has an artistic side and he’s a very sensual person. Who better than Billy Dee Williams to know what a woman would want in a perfume?”

It’s too early to know whether many of today’s celebrity scents have the “legs” (staying power in perfume parlance) to take their place among classics such as Chanel No. 5 and Guerlain’s “L’Heure Bleue.” Some released in the past 10 years--Sophia Loren’s “Sophia,” Linda Evans’ “Forever Krystle” (after her character, Krystle Carrington, on the soap opera “Dynasty”) and Candice Bergen’s “Cie”--had strong heydays but are faltering or have already fizzled.

Dionne Warwick’s “Dionne” fragrance dropped off perfume counters last year and reappeared as prizes for dancers on the TV show, “Soul Train.”

But research has shown that it’s never too late to begin marketing a celebrity scent.

The executors of the estates of Ernest Hemingway and Elvis Presley are considering licensing the dead stars’ names for celebrity scents.