Are Expensive Fragrances Worth It?


If you’ve been looking into fragrances, you’ve probably noticed that some of them have a very high price tag. I also noticed this and was wondering if they are even worth it.

Are expensive fragrances worth it? Expensive fragrances are expensive because of the time and ingredients that get put into it. A lot of time and research is put into an expensive fragrance and it’s constantly modified to perfection. The ingredients that are used in an expensive fragrance are also of higher quality, and often have a higher concentration of scented oils. This makes the price go up but also improves the quality of the fragrance a lot. This often makes the price justifiable. 

A couple of factors have an influence on the price of a fragrance. These are brand perception, marketing, packaging, developing and the scale.  All of these eventually add up to a higher price tag.

Are The Expensive Fragrances Worth It

If you started to get interested in fragrances, you’ve probably seen or heard of some ridiculously expensive fragrances. The main question people always ask is; are these fragrances worth the money. And these questions are really justifiable. If you look at the price of a bottle of Creed Aventus, you’ll see it can be around $300 for 3.3 ounces, whereas something like Dior Sauvage costs around $90 for the same amount.

Are these fragrance worth the money? This really depends on you. Are you a fragrance expert, and are looking for some new niche fragrances? By all means, go for it. But if you are looking for your first fragrance, I wouldn’t recommend going with some of the really expensive ones. There are so many amazing fragrances out there, with so many different price points, that you can find a great alternative. But if you’ve already established a nice base of fragrances, you can most certainly experiment with the more expensive ones. It really wouldn’t hurt to buy one that is expensive if you already have a few bottles. This way you can switch it up and you won’t use your expensive one every day.

Also, something very important, do you actually like the smell? Fragrances can be very subjective sometimes, so you might not even like the scent that it has. So it ultimately comes down to your own opinion.

I’ve already listed certain things that influence the price, like the development, packaging, marketing, brand perception, and the scale. These will be explained.

Developing And Packaging

So let’s start with the beginning. The production if the fragrance. A fragrance is essentially a mix of alcohol, water, and scented oils. These scented oils are often from certain flowers, roots or certain musks from animals. So when these scented oils are easily found, or when they can be created, the price of the fragrance can stay relatively low. But when these oils are rare and not easily found, the price can go up. This is because getting hold of these oils will be much harder and cost the company way more money. Therefore, the price tag that a fragrance gets, should make up for these costs.

For example, some flowers only bloom one month in the entire year. You can imagine that getting hold of that particular flower will be much harder and more expensive than getting hold of a simple rose. Sometimes, a fragrance requires a whole bunch of flowers for one single bottle. If the fragrance needs a really high amount of something, this too can get the price to go up. There is one fragrance, Jean Patou Joy Perfume, that requires 10.600 jasmine flowers and 28 dozen roses, just for one bottle. This is a women’s fragrance, which, as you can guess, is a flowery fragrance which you can find here on Amazon. As you can guess, these enormous amounts lead to a higher price.

When the fragrance is created, it has to be packaged. Now, fragrance companies know that nice looking packages sell. This is because they stand out more and your package can give of a very luxurious vibe. Of course, this leads to people wanting to have it. And if it smells amazing too, you just know you got a deal.

Sometimes though, companies can really go all-out on the packaging. Think of crystal bottles or even diamonds and pieces of gold in it. Some bottle companies sell extremely expensive crystal bottles, which look amazing, but really drive the price up. Pair these expensive bottles with expensive ingredients, and you’ll have an expensive product. But developing and packaging a fragrance isn’t everything there is to it.

Marketing And Brand Perception

When the fragrance is created, the brand that sells it has to go out there and show the world that the fragrance exists. This is called marketing. The marketing of a fragrance really differs. Sometimes a company will spend millions on marketing their fragrance, and sometimes they spend next to nothing.

When a company decides to market their fragrance, they can do it in multiple different ways. For example, if you see a bottle of Dior Sauvage, you’ll more than likely see Johnny Depp with it. Dior paid a celebrity to appear with the fragrance. This way, people will associate Dior Sauvage with Johnny Depp, and be more likely to buy it. But this doesn’t come without a cost. It is estimated that Johnny Depp is paid between 3 and 5 million dollars to appear in the advertising. But this isn’t the only form of advertising that companies will do. These celebrity appearances usually come hand in hand with other ad campaigns, that show the fragrance to the world.

Sometimes companies don’t opt for expensive ad campaigns. Some companies have a very well established name in a certain niche. For example, Creed is very well known for its famous fragrance Creed Aventus. They really haven’t done much advertising, but their product is very well known in the fragrance community. The brand ‘Creed’ has the perception of a high quality, luxurious fragrance, which allows them to price it that way.

Scale Of The Economy

When a very big company launches a new fragrance, it comes with a lot of costs. Therefore, it is far too risky to experiment with new and exciting things. That’s why most designer fragrances are hanging around the same price point. The fragrance simply cannot fail, or it will cost the company millions of dollars.

On the other hand, small companies have a much smaller risk, which allows them to take risky and bold moves when it comes to creating their fragrances. Of course, it’s still a risk, hence the higher prices, but these fragrances are beloved by enthusiasts. They are different from the mainstream and that appeals to them.

Related Questions

Do expensive perfumes last longer? An expensive perfume has higher quality ingredients, which certainly add to the perfumes lifetime. They usually also have a higher concentration of scented oils, the oils that make the perfume smell a certain way, which makes it last longer. So this means that expensive perfumes will last longer than the cheaper variants.

Is creed perfume worth it? Creed has multiple different perfumes, both for men and women. The scent will differ and will always be subjective, meaning that if you find the smell worth the high price tag, you should get it. The general consensus is that Creed has some really good smelling fragrances that are worth it.

Jasper Pieterse

Hi, my name is Jasper and I've been a long time fragrance fan. Ever since 2014, I started to get a huge interest in fragrances and I've had my nose on countless of different fragrances. I'm excited to share my experiences!

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