Fashion designers court fragrance customers

? The modern fragrance wearer is both fashion-forward and fickle.

She is always checking out what’s new at the perfume counter – and there is always something new – but she also needs to be convinced to switch from the scent she’s already wearing.

For Candy Pratts Price, executive fashion editor for Style.com, it’s often the bottle that draws her in. Her favorite, for many years, is Santa Maria Novella Tuberose, but she says she longs for the days when women would have a vanity littered with beautiful bottles.

“A lot of effort goes into making the bottle beautiful,” she said. “I wish we noticed more.”

One new one she would add to her collection is Tom Ford Black Orchid. The opaque bottle, made by Lalique, is jet black with gold accents and Art Deco-style lines.

“It’s a very ‘public’ bottle – a beautiful bottle that should be displayed,” she said.

Pratts Price noted, however, that it has much more of an old-fashioned feel than some of Ford’s fans might be used to. She wondered if modern women will appreciate the message of subtle luxury, especially with a suggested price of $90 for 1.7 ounces of eau de parfum and $600 for a half-ounce of pure perfume.

Scores of fragrances come and go each year, observed Pratts Price, which means shoppers are using them more like an accessory – in one season, out the next. It used to be that once a woman identified with a scent, she stuck with it.

No more.

Fashion designers are now a driving force in prestige fragrance and they’re used to tinkering with things – even successful things.