This Fragrance Has All Look And No Substance

If you don’t know Paco Rabanne for his work in the sixties (think space age looks and lots of short numbers for ladies in plastic and metal) then you at least know him for those Invictus commercials: some guy out of Men’s Health strutting about after a sports game only to claim a cologne bottle in the shape of a trophy.

In our continual quest to break down the gender barrier in fragrance, we tried Fame which is a perfume marketed towards women. This is a warm floral with notes of mango, jasmine, and incense. We liked the top note of mango and wished that it stayed around a lot longer than it did because this kind of devolved into something indistinguishably generic: by that we mean the perfume section of any department store. As we’ve noted before, middle ground is maybe what these big brands are striving for - nothing too weird that scares people away. After all, fragrances are part of luxury brands’ bread and butter. But for $106 there are great options from more indie brands that will truly make you smell unique - try Commodity’s Book for example. Maybe the only saving grace is its bottle which looks like a woman in one of the house’s iconic dresses and reminds us of a Karl Lagerfeld Tokidoki toy. But at that point, we’d recommend just buying a damn toy. Pass.

Paco Rabanne Fame, $106.00

Price point: High