Covet by Sarah Jessica Parker

Sarah Jessica Parker Joins the Celebrity Fragrance Club

Just like Britney Spears, Beyonce, Paris Hilton, Shania Twain, Jennifer Lopez, Victoria Beckham and countless others, Sarah Jessica Parker has joined the ranks of big-name celebrities making a splash in the fragrance world. When her newest scent, Covet, hit the shelves in July 2007, it joined its predecessor, Lovely, in becoming a near-instant top seller.

This is no surprise. Nearly every celebrity-backed fragrance has gone on to enjoy high acclaim. The scents are typically promoted with great aplomb, with magazine advertisements, sample strips and plenty of attention showered upon them in the beauty world at large. An actress such as Sarah Jessica Parker, who's best-known and perhaps most admired for her role as the fashionable Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, is the perfect example of the ideal face to pair with a new fragrance.

How it Began

How do you decide what the perfect fragrance for you is? In the end, it's all about body chemistry. If certain notes work well on your skin and please your senses, you're bound to fall in love with the scent. The same goes for any fragrance you'd put your own name on. This is as true for celebrities as it is for anyone else – just ask Sarah Jessica Parker.

The actress held nothing back in fully expressing her passion for scent when she introduced her first fragrance. This could be traced to Parker's habit of collecting perfume oils, blending them with drugstore fragrances and formulating her own unique creations.

The end result, some 20 years after Parker began mixing scents, was Lovely. Launched in 2005, the fragrance immediately stole hearts with its soft, pleasant blend of mandarin, bergamot, rosewood, apple martini, lavender, patchouli, paper whites, cedar, orchid, white amber, woods and musk.

While it seemed the scent contained an unexpected blend sure to confuse the senses more than anything else, its result was something entirely different: a near instant best seller for Nordstrom and a coup on the celebrity fragrance market.

Needless to say, Parker's nose for great scents and the success of Lovely all but guaranteed a follow-up fragrance. The actress spent a year developing the newest scent with perfumer Frank Volkl, of the international perfume house Firmenich, and fragrance consultant Anne Gottlieb. The result was Covet, released in July 2007.

Covet by Sarah Jessica Parker Sparkles

Hubby Matthew Broderick thinks it's a great scent!

Of her clothing label, Bitten, Sarah Jessica Parker told The New York Times that her "fatal flaw is that I have to be involved literally down to splitting the atoms." This is true of her ventures into both fashion and fragrance.

Covet displays an ardent, bold and striking personality. It's in sharp contrast to lovely, a scent so gentle that it almost seems to suit any skin with ease. Covet, however, is less ladylike and more arresting in its tendency to turn heads. Not only do its notes resound with a seeming inability to blend successfully, they seem practically incongruous – and it's only then that one begins to appreciate just how adventurous Parker really is.

The breakdown for Covet is as follows:

Top Notes

• Wet Greens
• Geranium Leaves
• Sicilian Lemon
• Chocolate

Middle Notes

• Honeysuckle
• Magnolia
• Muger
• Michelia Yunnanensis (a creamy white flower also known as Velvet and Cream in botanical circles)

Base Notes

• Musk
• Vetiver
• Bois de Cashmere
• Teakwood
• Amber

Advertising and Promotion

Geranium leaves are just part of the complex Covet scent.

It only seems fitting that a scent pairing white floral notes with chocolate should be the subject of a wild, uninhibited advertising campaign. The commercial for Covet by Sarah Jessica Parker features the actress clad in a frothy Christian Lacroix gown, smashing a store window with her stiletto shoe in order to grab a bottle of Covet. She's arrested just as she reaches out for the scent, but instead,lands in jail. As she says at the end of the commercial, "I had to have it."

Clearly, millions of women share the sentiment. Covet has already proven a commanding force in the celebrity fragrance market, and much like its predecessor, it's likely to be a dominant seller.

Where to Purchase

Covet is available at department stores nationwide, and online at:

• Amazon
• Nordstrom