The Perfume of the Gods

Barbara Cartland, a Royal Wedding and Celebrity Fragrances

In an age where every celebrity and influencer has a beauty line and perfume, the expansion into products is almost expected—simply the next step in the amassing of fortune (or in expanding the grift, depending on how you look at it), no matter if the star in question is known for their skin/makeup looks/beauty/etc. Perhaps that’s why it’s so interesting to read the press’s reaction to the announcement of a Barbara Cartland perfume line back in 1981, as it shows just how far we have come—celebrity/influencer lines are the expectation, not the exception.

Barbara Cartland’s The Heart Triumphant eau de parfum, 1981.

“The Progress of Love - The Lover Crowned,” Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1771 – 1772.

Barbara Cartland’s The Heart Triumphant novel (1976) with cover painting by Francis Marshall.

In March 1981, Helena Rubinstein announced a new collaboration with romance novelist Barbara Cartland. Much was made in the media about the incongruity of this new endeavor—why her? —while seemingly forgetting the historical and continuing links between scent and love. She later revealed that Rubinstein president Larry Pesin approached her about the project, and she jumped at the opportunity, though she went on to explain that he “came over to England with 30 fragrances, and they all smelled bad.” After a return to the lab, Cartland and Pesin were able to find three scents that they agreed on. A Rubinstein spokesperson said that scents were “inspired by the castle-building fantasies of romances and adventure that Mrs. Cartland’s novels so vividly depict.”

“Love is like food to a woman and a good fragrance whets the appetite.”