So many, many discussions about it, just take a trip on Google to find a lot of infos. We are speaking about the famous-infamous "supermarket perfumes beating designer scents".
In summary, a well-known supermarket brand decided to produce their own scents, with only one rule: producing a perfume with a final price "less than five Euros" (4 UK pounds, or 7 US dollars), all inclusive, and on-par (same quality) with well-known designer scents.
The maximum of the trick was a sort of "blind tests" using original designer scents, asking a group of volunteers "what's the best perfume?". Well, the results was that at least 50 % of people said that best perfumes were the supermarket ones (the designer scents used for blind tests were Coco Mademoiselle by Chanel, and Hugo Boss Bottled , both with a considerably higher price than "supermarket" ones).
Well, let's make the same thing.
In this test it was decided to repeat the same experiment: on the first side there are the two supermarket perfumes, namely Suddenly Madame Glamour and X -Bolt (total cost: less than ten Euros), on the other side there are samples of Chanel and Hugo Boss.
The results? "Supermarket perfumes" are not clones, because there are at least some difference. But, in one of ther two cases, it's a very slight difference....
With regard to female fragrances, Suddenly Madame Glamour is different from Coco Mademoiselle, it's not a clone, but (this is important) smells like a high-class perfume, fine, persistent, elegant. It could be a Chanel flanker, and no one would reasonably argue about it. .
Regarding the men fragrances , the comparison is almost embarrassing: X - Bolt is 90% identical to Hugo Boss Bottled , and it is difficult to find differences at first smell. Only after an hour you can detect some difference, whereas the longevity of X- Bolt is slightly lower than the Hugo Boss Bottled one.
What's the conclusion ? Let's put aside the discussion whether it is possible to produce perfect imitations at lower cost. The question, in my opinion, is another. It's about the price.
It's really embarrassing to have to admit that there are very good perfumes available at bargain prices, because this means that prices of traditional, designer scents are very (too ?) high, and the quality/price ratio is definitely unfavorable.
It's obvious that perfumes on sale at such a low price are entirely chemicals products, but it is obvious, at the same time, that a good perfume, "built" by experts hands, can be produced/sold/bought at affordable prices. There is no reason to pay big amounts of money for a perfume, unless you "buy" the brand, the marketing, the "glamour".
In any case, if a provocation had to be, the supermarket chain hit the target: today, it is possible to produce good products at low prices.
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| on left: X-Bolt ("Hugo Boss Bottled" alleged clone) on right: Suddenly Miss Glamorous ("Mademoiselle Coco Chanel" alleged clone) |
