Christmas is always a boom time for the perfume industry — the run-up to the big day accounts for more than half of all perfume sales for the year — but it seems that it’s not all going to be Dior and Chanel sitting under the tree. Last week it was revealed that scents from stars such as Britney Spears, Beyoncé and Cheryl Fernandez-Versini are outselling established fragrance brands such as DKNY, Hugo Boss and Gucci by as much as three to one. But are these perfumes actually any good, or are they simply trading in on a name? To find out, we asked fragrance expert, Callum Langston-Bolt, of Les Senteurs, London’s oldest independent perfumery, to blind-sniff some of the best-selling celebrity scents from The Perfume Shop, and give his verdict, before revealing to him exactly who was behind each one.
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Perfume is a Christmas list favourite with thousands to choose from
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Celebrity scents are currently outselling established brands three to one
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One of London's top fragrance experts has put them to the test
I suppose finding out it’s @placeholder isn’t that much of a surprise, and the bottle is one of the ugliest I’ve seen.1/5