Liz launches her new passion

Press, 13 May 1987, Page 16

Liz launches her new passion

By

ARTHUR SPIEGELMAN,

NZPA-Reuter, in New York For $287 an ounce plus tax you can smell like Elizabeth Taylor. But, face it, that may be all you can do to imitate the diamond-and-husband-studded Taylor lifestyle. After 45 years in show business, Elizabeth Taylor has gone into businessbusiness, touting a new perfume called “Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion.” “It’s my first business venture,” says the 55-year-old Hollywood star who has become the latest celebrity to have an ultraexpensive fragrance marketed in her honour, trading on her name and image. Stars competing with each other at cosmetic counters are Catherine Deneuve, Sophia Loren, and Linda Evans. Elizabeth Taylor’s perfume is geared to a woman who is well over 30 and old enough to be inspired by the lady who played Cleopatra and walked off with Mark Anthony (Richard Burton) while the cameras were still rolling. The actress will soon be starring in department stores, marketing the perfume, a dusting powder, a spray, an eau de cologne and even a bottle of scent clothed in a mink pouch.

She admits she has never played a department store before.

An eight-city tour is planned, plus a S2OM advertising campaign with the slogan, “Be touched by the fragrance that touches the woman.”

If all goes well, Taylor may have a new product, “Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion for Men,” which is a perfume pusher’s way of describing aftershave and not a reference to her seven marriages.

Taylor unveiled her new floral fragrance, its lavender package and art deco bottle at a New York news conference that was pure Hollywood hokum. ' As befits a movie queen, Miss Taylor, leg-

endary for telling time badly, arrived 55 minutes late after reporters were told to arrive two hours early. She was asked a total of two questions, including one which ended- with the questioner blowing her a kiss. She then conducted a series of television miniinterviews. Chit-chat was confined to Miss Taylor’s current passion — the perfume. No-one was rude enough to mar the moment by mentioning her current companion, George Hamilton. One of the two questioners managed to ask if she would appear in the television advertisements for the product alone, “not that you are ever alone.” Miss Taylor replied mysteriously that she was never alone even when she was alone. The hotel meeting room was decorated as an Elizabeth Taylor museum for the occasion — complete with about a dozen life and near life-size photographs of her, an equal amount of royal purple pennants declaring "Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion,” batches of white flowers and a video of her blaring out on two television sets. The • video included some acting by Taylor, wearing a white scientist’s

jacket as she is handed her scent by whitpsmocked Parfums International senior perfumer Rene Moranthaler. “Oh, I love it,” she declares, her violet eyes aflame with passion. In another scene from the video, the British photographer, Norman Parkinson, describes her as the closest thing the United States has to a queen, noting the country lost its princess when Marilyn Monroe died. "Can you describe the packaging of the bottle,” Taylor was asked. She answered: “As you know purple and lavender are my favourite colours. The bottle is Art Deco, another favourite. When I was in Washington (married to United States Senator John Warner), I didn’t wear the colour purple because it denoted passion.” The perfume will go to sale in August in 700 outlets. For her television advertisements, the actress claims to wear SI2M worth of jewellery. She was much less showy at her news conference, wearing only the $1,131,000 diamond brooch she bought from (the Duchess of Windsor’s collection. “It is the first important piece I ever bought for myself,” she said.