The Smell Test

In Consumed: Unforgivable: With the pop culture-ization of the fragrance aisle, it’s harder to make a hit scent linger.

A few years ago, when the fragrance industry was in a slump, the cosmetics company Coty released Glow by JLo, a perfume that served, more or less, as a Jennifer Lopez brand extension. There had been celebrity-linked fragrances before, but Glow’s successful start-up helped spark a kind of beauty-aisle casting call, resulting in deals involving everyone from Celine Dion to Danielle Steele. Perhaps inevitably, the ubiquitous Sean (Diddy) Combs got in on the party this year, in the form of a scent called Unforgivable (produced by an Estée Lauder subsidiary), which costs around $55 for a 2.5-ounce bottle. It is one of the top-selling men’s fragrances of the first half of 2006 and may even end up the year’s most successful launch for men or women, according to NPD Group, the market research firm….

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