Have you found The One?
And no, we’re not talking about your significant other. We’re talking about your signature scent.
The perfume and cologne business is betting big bucks that you’re still playing the field. U.S. sales of men’s and women’s fragrances totaled nearly $3.3 billion in 2008, according to a report from Chicago-based market research company Mintel.
Fragrance companies are banking on celebrities to drive business. Paris Hilton alone has eight fragrances. Stars ranging from Jessica Simpson to the Beckhams have their own scents. Soon, Rihanna and Kanye West will join them.
However, only 6 percent of women and 5 percent of men ages 18 to 24 say celebrity endorsement is the motivation behind their fragrance purchases, the Mintel report showed.
Still, shoppers like Ronald Travis, 18, will end up putting celebrity scents in their carts if they pass the smell test. “If I like it, I will buy it,” said Travis, a student who lives on the South Side and wears Paris Hilton for Men.
More than half of women — 55 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds and 63 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds — used a certain fragrance based on whatever they felt like at the moment, the Mintel report stated.
Kerry Wilkins’ favorite perfume: Victoria’s Secret Very Sexy. She said it makes her feel like the label name. “I like scents that last longer,” added Wilkins, 26, of Rogers Park.
Companies try to sell fragrances through overtly sexual advertising, said Kat Fay, Mintel senior analyst. “Fragrances, since the dawn of time, have always been positioned as a way to make yourself more attractive to the opposite sex,” she said.
But can a fragrance really have the so-called Axe effect, making a guy as irresistible as chocolate or causing a stampede of women to chase him, as depicted in the commercials?
Jermaine Perry, 19, said he doesn’t buy into the advertising and packaging gimmicks after he tried Axe and found it to be a turn-
off. “It’s really just like, ‘Wham! I’m desperate. Can you smell me?’ It’s too strong,” he said.
(Axe recently created the “Double Pits to Chesty” campaign to show how to properly use the spray without overdoing it. The company also enlists the help of fragrance designer Ann Gottlieb, the “nose” behind best-selling fragrances cK1 and Eternity.)
Now all Perry wears is deodorant. “I think natural body odor is best as long as it’s clean,” said Perry, who lives in South Shore.
How good a man smells, whether it’s his natural scent or a fragrance he applies, is the most important factor in a woman’s attraction to him, said Rachel Herz, author of “The Scent of Desire.” For men, it’s looks first and then the scent of a woman, she said.
A woman can be attracted to a man’s natural scent because it can indicate how compatible his immune system is with hers, which is important when it comes to having a healthy child, Herz said.
The caveat, she said, is that the birth control pill can change odor preferences. In her book, she cites a 1995 study where women smelled T-shirts worn by men for 48 hours and placed in boxes. The shirts women picked as sexiest were from men who had the most dissimilar immune systems, but women on the pill picked shirts worn by men with similar immune systems.
Herz said she believes fragrances have the power to make someone more appealing. “If wearing a fragrance makes her feel more sexy and confident, she’s actually going to be perceived visually as more attractive,” Herz said.
So, what scents put people in the mood?
The smell of Good & Plenty candy combined with cucumber aroused women the most, according to a 1999 study by Dr. Alan Hirsch, founder of Chicago’s Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation. The scent of baby powder had a similar effect. But the smell of cherries, barbecue smoke and men’s cologne were turnoffs, he said.
Turn-ons for men: the smell of pumpkin pie and lavender, followed by black licorice and doughnut. Why? Hirsch doesn’t know exactly, but he said the smells could have been comforting or evoked nostalgia.
Odors are associated with positive or negative experiences, which then can evoke emotions, smell experts said. “The quickest way to change somebody’s mood or emotion is a smell,” Hirsch said.
Be aware that not all scents affect everybody in the same way, experts said.
An example is the aroma of wintergreen. In the U.S., people find wintergreen to be soothing, but it’s just the opposite in the U.K. because the smell was associated with a dental anesthetic used during wartime, said Pamela Dalton, olfactory scientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.
“The bottom line is the biggest driver of our reactions — emotional, arousal, sexual or otherwise — is probably going to be our own individual experience,” Dalton said.
Hirsch is taking a closer look at one particular emotion: happiness.
He is working on setting up a study to find out if a “Chicago happiness aroma” exists, and to find out the degree to which certain scents make people happy. To measure levels of happiness ,35 Chicagoans will sniff scents such as cotton candy and other odors and rate their levels of happiness. The subjects also will watch videos of nature scenes and monologues of Conan O’Brien, Dane Cook and Carlos Mencia and rate how happy the videos made them feel.
The video ratings serve as a comparison — Hirsch said he hopes to determine, for example, whether the smell of cotton candy enhanced happiness to the same degree as watching Conan.
Cosmetics maker Clinique developed a fragrance named “Happy,” with notes of the Hawaiian wedding flower and ruby red grapefruit.
Griselda delos Reyes, 35, of Romeoville, said Happy is her favorite signature scent. She said she wore the “refreshing” fragrance every day until the bottle was empty.
“It reminds me of summer — the sun is out,” she said. “It makes you kind of feel good.”
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lvivanco@tribune.com
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Build a scent
For those who can’t find a fragrance they like in stores, sniff around Aroma Workshop in Lincoln Park, where vials of floral, citrus and woodsy scents line the counter as part of the store’s test bar.
“We want [customers] to go on a journey,” said Tedd Neenan, owner of the store for 16 years. When customers discover scents they like, Neenan works like a chemist behind the counter, mixing two to three essential oils together in beakers to create signature fragrances for customers.
A custom-made, quarter-ounce fragrance roll-on costs $17, and a 2.25-ounce spray is priced at $32.
