On my desk I have a fake Chanel No5 eau de parfum bottle, I bought 2 years ago for 5 euros. It looks perfect - the bottle, stopper, label, under label. 90% perfect because I have a trained eye and because I used No5 for many years and I know the type of glass they use. But, from a QC point of view it would be 80% OK (like in fashion, a shirt with small defects to be sold in other country). The scent is a No5 copy, but here comes the fun. It's the old type, with several ingredients that have been changed in the Parisian formula. It's a No5 copy with its typical nitromusk note! It is almost a perfect copy that is hard to detect by somebody that is not familiar with No5 bottle / fragrance. Fakes from today, at least those I found in Romania, are almost perfect - and that's a huge market. I wrote several articles in my language about this danger and its impact on sales. But that's not my point. Imagine what will happen in 30 years on eBay. How would collectors distinguish the copy from the original?
Another amusing finding on the Romanian market of fake perfumes is Climat from Lancôme, a vintage perfume quite popular in Russia (and not in my country) but almost forgotten today. It's strange to find it near the latest Hugo Boss. It's also strange that in Paris, one could still find the original sold at Sephora, but the bottle / packaging looks very poor as if the original was a copy, a metaphoric proof that their production cost is not very different.
Did you enjoy my article? Sign up for updates about new fragrances, reviews of artistic perfumes and exceptional vintage masterpieces. I would be very happy if you would consider joining 1000 Fragrances, throughRSS feed,GoogleFriend connect, Facebook (more personal), or any other way that appeals to you.
Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art
