President Donald Trump is no stranger to merchandising. Over the course of his political career, he’s launched a line of Trump branded Bibles, sneakers, meme coins and, most famously, the ubiquitous red and white MAGA ball caps. His latest product is fragrances.
A couple weeks ago, he released "Trump Victory 45-47," a line of colognes and perfumes for men and women. This isn’t Trump’s first foray into the world of scent — back in December, he released a collection called “Fight, Fight, Fight” to commemorate the attempt to assassinate him while he was on the campaign trail last summer.
Saskia Wilson-Brown, the founder and executive director of the Institute for Art and Olfaction and the host of the radio show “Perfume on the Radio," joined The Show to give her perspective on Trump’s new fragrance.
Full conversation
SASKIA WILSON-BROWN: In terms of a precedent for a sitting president releasing a perfume, I don't know of any, but I guess any comparable would be sort of the celebrity perfume culture that is definitely not a new thing and has been around for, you know, a decade or actually longer than that. Like, when Paris Hilton released her perfume or Kim Kardashian, that's the culture I feel that this compares to.
SAM DINGMAN: And when folks like that come out with a fragrance, do they tend to work with somebody to really develop something that feels unique and new, or is it usually a situation where they're just kind of putting their name on something that already exists?
WILSON-BROWN: Most of these celebrity fragrances are done through licensing deals where an agency, a company, in Trump's case, it's a company called CIC Ventures, basically licenses the name.
DINGMAN: Well, Victory 47 for men promises “rich masculine notes with a refined finish,” that's a quote, but does not list any of the ingredients or the scent profile. I don't know if you've actually smelled Victory 47 for men, but if we look at ways other fragrances have tried to evoke things like wealth and masculinity, what would some of the ways of achieving that effect be?
WILSON-BROWN: It's a good question, and you know, of course, gender is evolving, our perception of gender is evolving and particularly in perfumery. But you know, traditionally, by which I mean the 20th century, European style perfume, you know, you would be looking at notes like a Fougère.
And I will say that the Trump's male perfume victory, you know, 45-47 for men does list Fragrantica, which is a fragrance website that has a Fougère, and so that's sort of a green mossy smell. It's very recognizable as a sort of classic men's cologne smell. On Fragrantica, they also list notes like geranium, cardamom and amber wood and then woody notes. So you know, geranium surprised me a little bit because that is and cardamom did as well. But, for the rest it's pretty predictably masculine, you know.
DINGMAN: Well, since it sounds like you've also looked at that website Fragrantica, you probably also saw the ratings of Trump's scent. Tell us about those.
WILSON-BROWN: But you know, Fragrantica has, you know, been accused of cleaning up the comment section, which I imagine, you know, if you're running a website like that and you're dealing with Trump, you probably have to to a degree. So the ratings are, there's very few. And you know, mostly they didn't get into the politics, they got into the perfume itself, and they weren't terrible, but they weren't amazing. They were kind of the big resounding, “Whatever.” I have to tell you I haven't smelled these, they're rather expensive and then, you know, I didn't want to pay that money, so I didn't buy them. So, I'm just going on hearsay.
DINGMAN: Sure, sure, but that is the other thing I wanted to ask you about. The price of these fragrances is nearly $250 a bottle. In the market more broadly, where does that situate these fragrances?
WILSON-BROWN: It's sort of the luxury niche market. So, that cost isn't so abnormal, to be honest, in the perfume space. What is, you know, not common is the combination of how it looks and what it's saying and then the cost. Usually things at that cost level are very perfumer forward and they're very fragrance formulation forward, so they'll go to great measure to explain why the cost is high, because they're using very special cardamom imported from wherever, you know. What's different here is that there's very little interest in explaining the actual formulation. It's more about the person himself.
DINGMAN: But so am I understanding correctly that ordinarily something that's around $250 a bottle, it would be the kind of thing that people who take fragrances very seriously would think, “Oh, it's the latest release by this person whose name is a known quantity in this world, and it would be very exciting to think about them coming out with some sort of new fragrance where the design of it would would really seem to warrant the cost.”
WILSON-BROWN: Yeah, exactly. I mean it's, it's basically, it's predicated on artisanship, you know, the idea that these perfumers are artisans and they have and you know, they are artisans, they're quite good at what they do. So, that artisanship is what people are paying for.
DINGMAN: Have you seen the bottles for this fragrance? What does it look like?
WILSON-BROWN: Only on the internet, yeah, so, you know, from what I see it's like a sort of round bottle that's very shiny and then it at the top, you know, I'd say two-third of the total object is this sculpture of Trump, you know, in gold.
Now, on the internet, word on the street is that the bottles look quite a bit less wonderful than they do on the website. Apparently they look quite cheap and plastic. To me they seem frankly quite generic, so.
DINGMAN: How would you situate this fragrance launch in the broader context of the fragrance scene of the moment? My understanding is that sales have slowed a little bit in the midst of the tariff related economic uncertainty.
WILSON-BROWN: Yeah. Anecdotally, you know, after, during and after COVID perfumed was having a moment. Certainly what I'm hearing from my friends and colleagues in the space is that the tariffs have really thrown things off. Some European perfumers are also intentionally not distributing in the U.S. as an act of protest, you know, others are so.
I don't know. I don't, like, I don't know how to place it because it's a classic celebrity launch perfume launch, but it's also our president. So, and typically, celebrity perfumes aren't that expensive, but because it's Donald Trump, of course it's quite a, you know, has this illusion of value, which is his stock and trade, so it's overpriced, you know, for what it is in terms of what's usually sold on the market. I'm not saying it's not worth it. I'm sure to some people it's worth it, but in terms of its competition, it's overpriced for its sector. So it just doesn't fit in with the industry. It doesn't make any sense. But people will love it, I'm sure, and I'm sure it'll sell wonderfully for the people who love him.
DINGMAN: If you were going to design a fragrance to smell like victory, what would you do? Where would you start?
WILSON-BROWN: Tough question. It would probably be a little bit bombastic. Wealth is is another question that's kind of interesting because, you know, there's this idea that wealth is meant to be showy, but actually, you know, my experience of which is limited, I'm afraid, but my experience of real wealth is that actually they it tends to a little bit more understated than one would expect. So it's, it's the sort of illusion of wealth versus real wealth. And for me, real wealth is, is a subtle understated thing that informs everything else, but that doesn't necessarily need to trumpet itself.
So to that end, I would design it in a more subtle way. I would probably use some amber materials like ambergris type materials, maybe some gentle woods, you know, some maybe some rich and opulent materials like wood or even, you know, narcissus or things like that, but it wouldn't be a classic Fougère, you know, cause that's just, it's too generic to be victorious or wealthy. It's just, it's just generic.
