Rip-off?

The last days I´ve, besides of trying some classic perfumes, thought about rip-offs. Rip-offs, copys and fakes and of course, particullary in the perfume buisness.


Of course I know that Ebay (and Swedish Tradera) are overflown by cheap budget versions of well knowned perfumes. And this is a obvious attempt to mimic the original, names and the colors of the bottles are very close to the original scent. The biggest different is the quality. A budget copy maybe (?) smells good for the first ten minutes, but that´s about it. Usually this kind of scents also lack staying power and complexity. But in this case, it must be obvious to most people that you got what you´re paying for. Even though the quality is poor, maybe the scent still is good enough for a teenager with not that much money.


But moving up a little in quality and performance. The celebrity scent trend seem to be here to stay and it seems to be hundreds of celebrities trying to do almost the same thing as their succesfull predecessors. After all, perfumes that have borrow the name from a famous pop-icon sells stunningly well. Everyone want´s to smell like a celebrity and they all smell like some kind of synthetic floralfruity syrup sweet or as it´s best, some kind of floralwoodymusk. The look of the celebrity scents are also quite similar, pink with bling-bling and prints of stars, lace or hearts all over are very popular. The few among celebrities that refuses to put their name on such a mix and support a little more different scent also have to put up with not selling as good...


And all the usual suspects, no of course I mean all the usual mainstream scents. If floral fruity is the thing everyone do floral fruity. Very small varieties as it´s a winning concept. The few times I´ve actually tried several such scents at the same thing, I can´t remeber any of them only a few thing later. They´re all similar to some super sweet overly fruity hairspray kind of scent. No personality or memorable feauture what so ever. When Thierry Muglers Angel arrived, of course every one had to have some kind of fruity gourmand patchouli. Despite that, I think the Angel wannabee´s not really become copies, but still quite similar, of course.


Personally I think that for instant People of the Labyrinths Luctor et Emergo and Kenzo Amour are very much like each other. Kenzo Amour Le Parfum on the other hand smells exactly like Serge Lutens Ambre Sultan during the dry down. And Ambre Sultan are so similar to Andy Tauers L'Air du Desert Marocain, but the Tauer scent isn´t as sweet. And all those fragrances I try and discover that they remind of some other perfume and then trying to figure out which scent it is.


But no, I don´t think that dedicated perfumers are so likely to comit conscious plagiarizing. But, imagine how not so fun it would be to work with a scent for long time and then it´s time to present it for co-workers and testers and all of them say -Hmmmm, it do smell really good, but it smells exactly like *some other fragrance all ready existing. What to do? No single human can keep up with all the released scents!?


Since I´m only try the perfumes, and not so familiar with how to actually create perfumes, I have no idea how easy or difficult it is to make an allready existing scent all over again. Maybe less than some milliliters of some ingredience are all that take to make two similar scents very un-similar?


Do you have some perfumes that are very much alike other perfumes that you´ve tried? Maybe you even discover some perfumes that are so similar that you can´t really tell them apart? Do you know if there is any rules that state how like two perfumes can be, legally? Or maybe you just want to say that those cheap scents for 5 euro at Ebay are really much better than one can think.



Pic: uhr.forum.de