Stars make perfect scents

Chermarn “Ploy” Boonyasak admits it: She’s a drama queen. So why not reward her honesty and buy her Ploy Cherman Drama Queen fragrance? Fellow actors Mario Maurer and Cris Horwang will also be wafting around their own bottled scents soon, joining a long list of celebrities with perfumes of their own, dating back to Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds in 1991.
 To the roster featuring Sarah Jessica Parker, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, Kate Moss, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton and (why not?) David Beckham, Thailand added Patchrapa “Aum” Chaichua in 2011.
Aum’s Sexy Me and Sexy Diva scents from Bel Perfumes Ltd were a hit, so Bel next tapped Araya “Chompoo” A Hargate for Pretty Doll and then Natalie Glebova for Beauty Icon.
Sceptics will claim it’s the same perfume marketed beneath different famous faces, but every scent is unique and each one has to actually smell sublime, counters Nattakan Denwanitchakorn, who’s in charge of the celebrity brands at Bel. “In the end, everybody wants a real perfume,” she says.
Bel is a Frederick Besson affiliate that’s been operating in Thailand for more than a decade. It’s the sole distributor here of Princess Marina de Bourbon, Jaguar, Blumarine and Houbigant and the scents of the stars like Aguilera, Dita Von Teese, Naomi Campbell, Avril Lavigne and Adriana Karembeu.
Bel also makes whole neighbourhoods smell better with its Mist 1000 Parfums, with six branches selling more than 150 brands, and last year opened the Mist Perfume Academy to teach about French-style fragrances. Bel has its own supplier in the form of leading French perfumers V Mane Fils.
“Creating a celebrity perfume is unlike any other kind of business that uses stars, like the fashion and jewellery industry or restaurants,” Nattakan points out. “It takes one or two years of development, and we treat our celebrities as partners, not just superstars ‘representing’ the product. There’s a lot of effort from both sides. We control the rights to the perfume for 20 years, too – this is not a year-to-year contract.”
That drawn-out development process begins with Bel trying out sample scents on its celebrity “partner”. “Whatever they like – vanilla, fruity, floral, sweet, rose, ocean, musk, whatever aromas – the perfumer will blend them and come up with between 10 and 20 scents, and then the stars choose three or four. These are then subjected to a public-opinion poll to see which one is most popular.”
The tang of orange, especially bitter-orange neroli, catches the attention at the first sniff of Ploy Chermarn Drama Queen. Then come Egyptian jasmine and wild gardenia, followed by a sophisticated mingling of white musk, amber and patchouli wood.
“I’m not a celebrity, I’m an actress,” Ploy has been quoted as saying, and that steely self-esteem in one of Thailand’s best (and best-looking) entertainers – a 19-year veteran – is what Bel set out to reflect in its perfume. Her first fragrance has all the charm and passion of her multiple and varied roles.
“Patchrapa is sexy, Araya is pretty and Natalie is a true beauty queen,” says Nattakan. “The fans see the various stars differently, but their scents must still reflect their true personality. That’s why celebrity perfume is distinctive and the marketing is different from other high-end perfumes.
“You can find Ploy Chermarn Drama Queen at any 7-Eleven, mainly because it must be accessible to all the fans across the country. Think about how many people watch Ploy acting on TV! And the price has to be affordable too so that fans with less money to spend can still smell like their favourite stars. We produced a 12-millilitre pocket-size spray for Bt199, whereas the 90ml costs B1,950.”
 Keep it real
 Meanwhile, just as you can easily find pirate DVDs of Ploy’s screen roles, you might stumble across an even cheaper bottle of Drama Queen – one that’s fake.
“Sometimes in a flea market you might discover the Mario perfume or even a ‘Nadech’ or ‘Yaya’ [ostensibly the scents of actors Nadech Kugimiya and Urassaya “Yaya” Sperbund] – even though they haven’t even been created yet!” Nattakan says.
“These are dangerous, though, because synthetic perfumes contain chemical ingredients that can cause harm when you breathe them in or when they penetrate the skin. Good perfumes like ours use only natural ingredients.”