Here we have it, folks, the first celebrity fragrance: Elizabeth Taylor Passion. That’s right. In 1987, Elizabeth Taylor was the first big name, besides a couturier, to brand a perfume. And she went big. Unlike some celebrities who curiously say, “I don’t really like perfume, but I like this one” about their eponymous “clean smelling” scents, Taylor put together a glamorous whopper of a perfume.¹

Passion’s notes include gardenia, jasmine, rose, ylang ylang, lily of the valley, amber musk, patchouli, sandalwood, cedarwood, incense, and moss. In 1988, the fragrance won a FiFi as the Women’s Fragrance of the Year, Nouveau Niche (Fendi won Fragrance of the Year, Luxe).

Jan Moran in Fabulous Fragrances quotes Taylor as saying about Passion, “It has a scent of mystery, slightly effusive, kind of smoky and sweet.” As to why she named the fragrance Passion…

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Until Elizabeth Taylor Forever Elizabeth, my experience with the House of Taylor was limited to White Diamonds’s grande dame aldehydic floral and Black Pearls’s delightfully trashy peach and black patent leather. Given these extremes, what could Forever Elizabeth smell like? A delicate composition of violets, jasmine and musk, that’s what.

If White Diamonds, Black Pearls and Forever Elizabeth were at a party, White Diamonds would be sitting on the couch while suitors brought her snacks, unaware that the ingénue would morph into a diva before the night was over. Black Pearls would be adjusting her corset and practicing a bump-and-grind in front of the mirror in preparation for a show later that night. Forever Elizabeth, though, would be in the corner, writing poetry, lost in her own world…

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