Winner By A Nose

By Joel Stein

Hundreds of well-dressed women are sniffing one another. They sit under a marquee spelling THAT'S SCENTERTAINMENT in Manhattan's Lincoln Center, asking one another, "Do you like my fragrance?" The answer, invariably, is yes.

But that lie will soon be dispelled, because for every perfumer who goes home with a FiFi award, four or five will go home with nothing but the stink of failure. More than 1,500 of the best-smelling people in the world have paid a minimum of $950 a ticket to attend the black-tie 26th Annual Fragrance Foundation Awards celebrating the $5 billion industry, and by the end of Tuesday evening, they want to smell blood. They will.

The ceremony's opening video montage blasts the crowd with classic perfume-related moments in film, far too many of which involve Barbra Streisand. Then Annette Green, president of the Fragrance Foundation and creator of the FiFi, is escorted onto the stage. Green, who has spawned annual FiFi award shows in Britain, France, Germany and Spain, announces that the vast proceeds from this event will go to a worthy cause. That cause is not homelessness or AIDS babies, but the Olfactory Research Fund, which Green also heads. The fund counts among its latest projects a joint study with the Kinsey Institute to determine the effect of fragrance on women's sexual fantasies. (Drakkar Noir, it seems, does wonders.)

The night is punctuated by underdog winners, the greatest of which may have been Tova Nights, which won Women's Fragrance Introduction of the Year in Non-Store Venues. Accepting the award from presenters Kenny Rogers and Faye Dunaway, Tova Borgnine thanked Margaret from Pennsylvania, a QVC viewer who inspired Tova Nights by confessing to Borgnine that her other products had led her to have a "Tova night" with her husband. Before, she implied, she was having a lot of Carol Channing nights.

"When I was walking on the stage for the photo op, Leonard Lauder [CEO of Estee Lauder] extended his hand and said, 'Congratulations. You deserved it.' It was like God coming down and saying, 'You made it,'" Borgnine said the next day after partying all night and returning to her office at 3:30 a.m. for a champagne toast with her staff. She compared her surprise victory to the Academy Award her husband Ernest Borgnine won for Best Actor in 1955. "When Ernie was up for Marty, the odds were against him. He had Frank Sinatra, James Cagney, Spencer Tracy and James Dean, who had just passed away. So, many years apart, we shared an experience in our industries," she said. The FiFi will sit in the Borgnine home media center, next to Ernest's Oscar.

Though it seemed as if everyone won a FiFi (27 were handed out), that, of course, could not be. It was relatively easy for the Gap's Blue No. 655 for Him to win the FiFi for Men's Fragrance Introduction of the Year for Fragrances Sold in Private Label Stores (it was the only entry), but competition in certain categories--like Best Package and Best Advertising Campaign--was severe. While it doesn't much affect sales, a FiFi can directly affect the career of those involved, giving them precious exposure to marketing partners. "It was devastating for us," says Cindy VanderVoort, wife of Koert VanderVoort, vice president of sales for Quest International, which launched Tommy Girl, a major fragrance that lost the top FiFi to Chanel's Allure at last year's awards. "They worked for seven months on this. They flew guys in from France on the Concorde to touch up the top notes. He went skydiving for Hilfiger Athletics. He jumped off a f___ing plane." Amid his wife's rant, Koert looks uncomfortably down into his drink. "You're going to make me cry," he says.