December 9, 2009 Harper's Bazaar
THE FIGHT AGAINST FAUX FRAGRANCES
Buying a counterfeit perfume may seem harmless...until you discover what's really inside that bottle could be toxic chemicals — or worse.
By MARIA RICAPITO
"Everyone loves a bargain. So when Ann James* found her favorite perfume, Red Door by Elizabeth Arden, online at a steep discount, she was thrilled. But then her gut instinct kicked in. "I'm thinking this sounds a little too good to be true," she says. Still, she bought the Arden and a bottle of Chanel No. 5 for $14 each. "I sprayed the Red Door on," she says. "It was a little strong, not the same smell I was used to. I put it on my wrist and in my elbow crease and a little behind my ear. Later, I looked in the mirror. It looked like I was sunburnt on those areas. My skin felt extremely hot, like a welt was forming on my neck." After an emergency call to her dermatologist and a dose of prescription cortisone, she was fine — but cured of her desire to try iffy fragrances.
Every day, anticounterfeiting agents are hard at work trying to make sure others don't go through what James did. Last holiday season in New York City, as shoppers bundled against the winter weather hurried from store to store on Manhattan's Upper East Side, looking for holiday gifts, hoping for bargains, a van filled with a team of eight men and women idled just north of 86th Street. They were investigators and lawyers hired by a luxe French fragrance company that sells a tiny bottle of scent for triple-digit sums.
Around the corner, an undercover operative bought a bottle of what seemed to be this perfume from a vendor's table stacked with cello-wrapped boxes. He brought his purchase back to the van, where it was confirmed as a fake by the telltale crooked label and off-kilter bottle cap that wouldn't stay on. The team poured out of the van, quickly surrounding the vendor's table.
"We had a seizure order issued by a federal judge that allowed us to seize the goods," says lawyer Heather McDonald, a partner at Baker Hostetler in New York City who specializes in intellectual-property enforcement and was on the raid. As some investigators searched bins under the table and in a nearby van, others spoke to the man behind the table. "They say, 'Oh, we had no idea; we buy from a wholesaler' but won't say where," McDonald says. She and the rest of the team boxed up a few dozen bottles of their employer's brand and gave the seller a receipt for product seized. "We covered the entire city and made it clear to vendors that if they continue to sell this brand, we'll continue to go after them."
When customs and law enforcement get involved, counterfeiters have bigger worries. At a Newark, New Jersey, raid last year, a shipment of phony perfumes with an equivalent retail value of nearly $5 million was seized. In busts like this, the merchandise is destroyed or held to be used as evidence in court. If convicted of trademark counterfeiting, a trafficker can face up to $5 million in fines and 20 years in jail time.
As fashion counterfeiting is increasingly driven underground, fragrance is the latest front in the fight against fakes. Wasting your money on a street Goyard tote may hurt your wallet when the flimsy strap snaps, but it's unlikely to physically harm you. Counterfeit perfumes, however, suddenly seem to be everywhere — at flea markets, on street-side tables — and they can actually make you sick.
"You rarely see reactions to fragrances when they are high-end and made from high-quality ingredients such as essential oils," says Jeannette Graf, a dermatologist in Great Neck, New York. "Knockoffs are poorly made, cheap, and reactive. You don't have accountability with a knockoff. It could be made in someone's bathtub for all you know." Bad reactions, she says, range from a runny nose to redness and eczema.
Fragrance is absorbed by your body. It is a class of product that you ingest in some way," says Patrick Bamburak, director of forecasting and planning for Dior Perfumes in North America. "You want to go to a legitimate place where it should be bought." Counterfeit fragrances have not been subjected to the quality-control tests and research and development on which legitimate makers spend money and time. "When you wear a fake, the experience is a lot different," Bamburak adds. "It's either more concentrated and will be more strong or will have an alcoholy smell that won't last." And fakes have been found to contain contaminated alcohol, antifreeze, urine, and harmful bacteria.
"It's a cancer for the industry," says Emmanuel Saujet, CEO of Creed North America. And the problem is growing. Therese Randazzo, director of intellectual-property-rights policy and programs for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, says that the street value of counterfeit fragrances seized by CBP jumped from $1.2 million in 2007 to $6.7 million in 2008 — an increase of 459 percent. Rochelle Bloom, president of the Fragrance Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization, sums it up: "If you buy a fragrance off the street from a man with a box, of course the retailers lose out." Adds Randazzo, "It takes jobs from legitimate industries."
Your conscience may be another casualty. "Counterfeiters in general are tied to organized crime and illegal activity," says Randazzo. "There's more money to be made in counterfeits than in drugs — and less exposure," adds investigator Kris Buckner, founder of Investigative Consultants, a Los Angeles-based company that helps track down counterfeiters. "The consumer has to get the bigger picture that buying counterfeits supports gangs, drug dealing, guns, murders, extortion, and terrorism."
And it's not just fragrances that are under attack. If you see salon-only hair products in a drugstore or supermarket, for example, they may be counterfeit, black market, or past their expiration date. "There have been some cases where it's been pretty dangerous," says John Paul DeJoria, cofounder and CEO of Paul Mitchell, who cites phony product that was a veritable petri dish of bacteria and a spray that hurt a woman's eyes. "That's not stuff you want on your skin," he says. "And it hurts our brand if someone does get the product from a drugstore or supermarket, it's old or counterfeit, and she may not buy it again because she thinks it was not good."
The bottom line: Counterfeiters will continue to chase after profits, and legitimate companies and law enforcement will try to stop them. But consumers need to educate themselves. "Fragrance in particular is a way for many more customers to experience a slice of luxury without getting a designer bag or dress," says Bamburak. A genuine scent is safe — and special. "Buying a fake undermines the purpose of why you get a product like that." And in this uncertain world, you may find you need the real thing now more than ever.
HOW TO SPOT A FAKE SCENT
TAKE A CLOSER LOOK. If the liquid looks too pale, it could be an alcohol-heavy phony. If it's too dark, it could consist of impure or faux ingredients.
BE A LABEL CONNOISSEUR. If the label is off-kilter, smudged, poorly printed, or misspelled, it's not legit. If the bar code or an identifying mark looks sketchy, it could be a phony.
BUY RIGHT. Top-quality perfumes are sold at department stores, beauty specialty stores such as Sephora, and sometimes high-end boutique pharmacies and apothecaries.
DON'T BE FOOLED. Real fragrances are not sold on tables in tourist hot spots or at flea markets, supermarkets, discount stores, or out of the back of a truck.
BEWARE THE BAIT AND SWITCH. Some unsavory vendors will display the genuine fragrance up front when you're shopping but substitute a fake when handing over your purchase."
*Name has been changed.
