Fishbowl: the cancer of private lines - a rant

Recently my fragrance obsession has been Forever and ever Dior. I've been saving for a while to get it, and now I'm waiting for it to come from America in the mail. It's Jomashop, so it'll take...about half my lifespan to show up, but hey, cheap, good, fast. You can only pick two.

This fragrance is unfortunately discontinued, and if I ever run out, I'll unfortunately have to resort to the minefield of eBay price gouging and fakes. Luckily I am a serial undersprayer and 100ml takes a while to go through, so it'll be a few years.

I heard that Dior released a similar fragrance to it called Sakura so I went to try it out. Why not. It's very, very, very similar. Slightly less green, and slightly more powdery. But basically a dupe. What I don't understand is Forever and Ever costs 185 AUD for 50ml. Sakura costs 383 AUD for 50ml. Sure, discounters and different currencies affect costs a little. But WTF. You are telling me, that basically the same juice in a more boring bottle is 200 AUD more?

A lot of Dior's modern non-private line offerings, to put it simply, are mediocre or have been ruined by reformulation. Miss Dior (2021) Eau de Parfum, Dior Homme Parfum (2024), Dior Addict (2014) Eau de Parfum, the new Glow Addicts, ETC (I have little experience with masculine fragrances so if there's one I haven't mentioned in that category, sorry).

You look at vintage Hypnotic Poison Eau de Toilette, you look at vintage Chanel N°5 (for some reason Parfumo won't let me link that), vintage Angel Eau de Parfum, vintage Trésor (1990) Eau de Parfum, older versions of Aventus, even if you don't like some of those fragrances, (e.g. I dislike N°5) they do smell higher quality and more complex than their modern versions.

Make the main offerings shit because you should of course be paying ridiculous amounts of money if you actually want anything good.

Every brand seems to be getting in on or already in the private line trend. It is tiring. Yes, love the variety of new fragrances. No, don't love the price tag. Nest makes their bottles ugly and cheaper quality (as well as sneakily reformulating their bestseller Indigo to have the lasting power of a fart in the wind) and oh, look, they've recently introduced a private line called Voyages! You would think paying 550 AUD for a perfume means you're getting the best stuff a brand has to offer, but no, Creed has a private line for some reason so that'll be 769 AUD for a smaller, uglier bottle (100ml vs 75ml private line, WTF).

Raise prices. Make bottles worse quality. Guerlain's Aqua Allegoria line and Kayali seem to have the same idea with that. Everyone has their own example (or examples) of a brand/fragrance they like either being reformulated, getting a worse quality bottle or getting a price increase. Potentially all three, and if that's you that sucks, I hope you find a good dupe.

To be honest, I'm just tired. Why can't we look at the main fragrances of a mid to high range brand, expect high quality and have our expectations met? Perfume isn't cheap. The margins companies make on fragrance are ridiculous. So can't we get something that's at least great quality for the price? Montagne's Imaginary and Imagination smell basically identical for very different prices. Since Montagne's making theirs at a profit, how much money is LV making?

I'm under no illusion with the reason that they, and many other companies do this; greed. Honestly the whole post could have just begun and ended with that, but this is a rant and I'm frustrated this happens so you get to see me whine about it in a fragrance forum.

TLDR: private line price gouging sucks and i want to actually get good shit if i spend good money on something