Why Elizabeth Taylor Only Wore Her Own Fragrances
Image: Frank Worth / Getty
Elizabeth Taylor was a lifelong lover of fine fragrances, who famously said that she would "never face the day without perfume." Even so, until the point of launching her own fragrance line in 1987, she had not found one that felt like a perfect fit for her. After years of mixing and layering different scents, she decided to create something totally new and unique. As Elizabeth's longtime personal assistant Tim Mendelson recently told People, "Elizabeth was 100% exclusive to the perfumes that carried her name. She created them as much for herself as for the multitude of women she would share them with and once in the fragrance business would never have dreamed of putting one on that was not her own." Her insistence on wearing her own fragrances reminds us not only of her incredible business savvy, but of the authenticity she brought to every area of her life.
Elizabeth’s fragrance career took shape in the mid-1980s, when she began working closely with Elizabeth Arden to develop a scent of her own. That partnership produced her first fragrance, Passion, in 1987. It was followed by White Diamonds in 1991, which became one of the best-selling fragrances of all time, and consequently created an entire product category now standard for many famous actors, musicians, and sports figures to endorse that barely existed before Elizabeth. Throughout the years, the line has expanded to include many more scents inspired by various facets of her life — most recently White Diamonds Icon.
Although each scent is unique and the themes behind them vary, what connects all of her fragrances is that they truly meant something to Elizabeth. Throughout her life, Elizabeth never compromised who she was, and she did not lend her name to anything with indifference. Elizabeth was proud to wear her own fragrances every day, underscoring how she refused to be anything other than true to herself.
Her consistency not only reflected her personal ethos and taste, it also built her brand. Every appearance and interview became an opportunity to celebrate the scent she'd had a direct hand in creating. The commercial success of her fragrances, especially White Diamonds, showed how much Elizabeth’s authenticity resonated.
At a time when celebrity fragrance lines were still a novelty, Elizabeth treated her scents as something worth standing behind, publicly and privately, every day. That devotion and courage — which she brought to the screen and her activism as well — was foundational to the brand's success, and is a large part of what causes these fragrances to continue to be so special. When you wear an Elizabeth Taylor fragrance, you wear something deeply personal to her; something she created as much for herself as for something she intended to share.
Shop The Elizabeth Taylor Fragrance Collection on Amazon.