Perfume to help you smell rich

Perfume and accessories, once the links to luxury brand cache for the lowly masses, have been growing in price considerably over the past couple of years. Now you’ll be lucky to find a designer handbag under $1000, and as for scent- you can thank Tom Ford for his help in raising perfume from the lowest form of brand association to the ‘limited edition’ exclusivity and ridiculous prices we see before us.

What this means of course is that brands are stepping up the competition to bottle the scent of money luxury. Whilst smaller perfumers offer bespoke fragrances at prices upwards of $8000, for larger beauty brands the price tag has only been pushed tentatively. However Estee Lauder (the company behind the Tom Ford Beauty range) are about to change all this with their new Private Collection fragrance called Tuberose Gardenia which will retail exclusively at Harrods, costing a whopping $400 for 30ml.

Talking to Vogue.com, Aerin Lauder described the new fragrance as fulfilling a market need: “When my grandmother launched the first Private Collection scent in 1973, it was all about quiet, personal luxury and I think that’s something there’s a really strong market for today. The modern consumer wants something fast and easy and cheap, then she’s mixing that with something very high-end and luxurious. That’s where this scent comes in.”

[via Vogue]