Britney Spears' Midnight Fantasy Perfume Will Teach You About Womanhood

And other things to learn in the world of celebrity scents

First, an announcement! It Girl: The Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin is coming October 7th! I can’t wait for you to read this juicy (and smart and fun and dramatic and emotionally intense) biography. The link above has a preorder sale (PREORDER25) April 23-25th if you enjoy getting a good deal.

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Tara Davi is my favorite fragrance obsessive. Last time she appeared on Soft Power, we discussed niche scents. I wanted her to come back to help me navigate a part of the fragrance world so intimidating I needed hand holding: celebrity perfumes.

I’ve always heard that Britney Spears’ Fantasy perfume was something Condé Nast editors gleefully wore in the way that a certain kind of deeply stylish person likes to say they swear by t-shirts from Target. I am that person—I serve donut holes at my holiday parties and am currently wearing Gap striped cotton poplin pants that I call “fake Cristaseya.”

My instructions to Tara were to go mainstream and unisex. First a little convo on the big business of perfumery for hire and then we get into it with Antonio, Ari, Paris, Britney, Nicki, and all our new muses…

Tara Devi: Celebrity perfumes generally have two things in common: lower price points compared to luxury/niche brands, and a lot of reviews containing the words “synthetic” and/or “generic. To be fair, many do have that recognizable walking-through-the-fragrance-section-at-Macy’s smell—which makes sense, since they often share perfumers with designer, niche, and other celeb lines. Apologies, Ari stans, she isn’t actually bottling your perfume herself.

Marisa Meltzer: So my question is, are the perfumers getting hired to do these getting paid more than doing something work for a smaller company such as By Kilian? In other words, is this the perfumer equivalent of signing on to act in a Marvel movie? One for me, one for you? A money job?

TD: From what I understand it’s like any other creative field, where they’ll respond to a brief. Usually the perfumers are working for a fragrance/ flavor creator like Givaudan, while the perfumes are under parent companies like Puig (Antonio) or Revlon (Britney). So I’d guess those are the ones with big budgets, most of which would go to marketing. I kind of think of it like getting something from Proenza vs their collabs with H&M.

Lower price points mean trade-offs in ingredient quality and other things of course, but there’s still real, top tier creativity and talent behind many of these. I’ve listed each of the fragrances I’ve tried below, along with the perfumer behind it and a few other brands they’ve worked with. Each is formulated as an Eau de Parfum (strong) except for CR7 and Blue Seduction, which are both Eaux de Toilette (weaker).

MM: Okay so Elizabeth Taylor really pioneered this world, and Paris Hilton and the like have cashed in. Which famous person would you like to have one? Mine is probably Isabelle Huppert or Miss Piggy.

TD: Celebs I would like to see create perfumes would be Lana Del Rey (perfumer: Marissa zappas) and Tyler the creator (perfumer: Dali of puppet parfums or Bree of barre).

I would kill for a Lana perfume. And now the sampling begins….