Parfums de Coeur
Drugstore body sprays since the Designer Imposters era.
Parfums de Coeur was set up in Darien, Connecticut in 1981 with a single commercial idea: cheaper versions of the prestige scents already on department-store counters. The Designer Imposters line followed in 1982 — Confess as a knock-off of Calvin Klein's Obsession, Primo! against Giorgio Beverly Hills, and so on — and survived a 1986 lawsuit from Calvin Klein largely intact, with the court only requiring clearer labelling. The company expanded by acquiring Prince Matchabelli in 1993 and launching its own mass-market lines, most enduringly Body Fantasies (1996), whose pink-bottled body sprays became a fixture of American drugstore aisles. Now branded PDC Brands, it sells body sprays, splashes and licensed scents through Walmart, Target and CVS. It suits wearers shopping the under-twenty-dollar tier and the nostalgia market for late-nineties American body fragrance.
DNA over time
Each column is an era. Each colored band shows that family’s share of accord weight across every perfume the house released in that window. Bigger band = the house leaned harder on that family.
