PARIS — Carolina Herrera New York’s blockbuster Good Girl fragrance has catapulted the brand into top rankings and new geographies.
The women’s scent with a sky-high stiletto-shaped bottle — a navy-hued pump with a gold-colored, striated heel — came out in July 2016. At that time, it was billed to be the biggest fragrance launch for the brand in 14 years and the first new pillar to be introduced since CH’s introduction in 2007.
Fast-forward to today, and Good Girl ranks in the top four among women’s fragrances worldwide and figures among the three bestsellers in a country like the U.S. That’s no small feat in a perfume market that’s flooded with launches each year.
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“It has become a phenomenal success,” said Ana Trias Arraut, chief brand officer of Carolina Herrera, Dries Van Noten and Nina Ricci at Puig, which owns the Carolina Herrera brand. “It has allowed us to conquer new geographies and to go even beyond our initial expectations.”
The Good Girl concept keeps chiming with consumers today.
“What we tried to do with the launch was to embody the values that Carolina Herrera fashion had,” explained Trias Arraut. “For us, Carolina Herrera was a brand that always accompanies [and empowers] women through the different stages of their life.”
Good Girl’s tag line, “It’s So Good to Be Bad,” was meant to reflect the duality of women.
“It’s inspired by interviews that my mother has done,” explained Carolina A. Herrera, creative director of Carolina Herrera and a daughter of the brand’s namesake designer, during a WWD interview published in 2016.
“She has always said that mystery is one of the most important qualities a woman can have. There is nothing more boring than an open book,” continued Herrera. “She loves the idea of mystery and naughtiness — but goodness — in a woman. This is where this all came from. We can be both good and naughty; it’s the yin and yang.”
For Good Girl’s flacon, the idea was to conceive an “impossible stiletto…one that is impossible to wear but that gives you this superpower, in a way,” explained Trias Arraut, adding it was a great technical challenge, involving thousands of mock-ups and tests.
She said it has become clear that the stiletto is a universal symbol, and with a laugh explained an inkling of the bottle’s desirability came early, when a dummy of the scent disappeared during a sales meeting prior to Good Girl’s launch.
Like many fragrances for the house of Herrera, a jasmine note is a key component of the Good Girl eau de parfum. A floral oriental, created by Givaudan perfumer Louise Turner, it infuses jasmine and roasted tonka bean notes. (Tonka bean generally is used in masculine perfumery and was meant to give an audacious twist.)
“We wanted, again, to bring something different,” Trias Arraut said. “We came up with something really contrasted.”
Images of Karlie Kloss kept appearing on mood boards during Good Girl’s conception, so it was only natural the model would be tapped to be the face of the fragrance. Mario Testino lensed her in the first campaign, and she’s been fronting the scent ever since.
A perpetual reinvention of Good Girl is key content- and product-wise in both the real and virtual worlds. The latest iteration to come out, called Very Good Girl, has a different juice than the original.
A recent online campaign for Good Girl features numerous ambassadors.
“We keep on saying: ‘How can we keep on embodying and expressing this female empowerment?’” said Trias Arraut, adding Kloss has been very much involved in that conversation.
Of the fragrance, Trias Arraut explained: “Everyone relates to it. It’s been a universally appealing concept and product without having to adapt much locally.”
She underlined that Good Girl has become a hit in geographies not historically the strongest for Herrera fragrances — that is to say, outside of Spain, Latin America and the Middle East, which were also historically the largest for the label’s fashion business.
In addition to figuring among the top three fragrances in the U.S., Good Girl ranks highly in countries such as Italy, Germany and China. The latter was entered via Sephora, where Good Girl places in the top 10.
The fragrance is used to introduce Carolina Herrera into some countries.
“We thought it was appealing, interesting and bold, but we were not aware it would be so universally liked and speak to so many people,” continued Trias Arraut. “Good Girl has allowed us to change completely the geographies we have for Herrera. Today, our biggest country is the U.S. This was not the case before in fragrances.”
Spain comes in second country-wise. Then, in terms of regions, Latin America ranks first, followed by Europe.
Good Girl is Herrera’s bestselling fragrance. At the time of its launch, industry sources estimated Good Girl could generate $100 million in retail sales during its first year on counter.
Minus that business, the sources expected the brand’s perfume revenues in 2016 would be about $600 million, with a large portion rung up in Europe, South and Latin America and the Middle East. Then there was only select distribution of Carolina Herrera’s scents in the U.S., in the brand’s boutiques, and Good Girl wouldn’t be launched in the country at the outset.
Growth has burgeoned everywhere since, and there are great expectations. In December 2020, Puig said that by 2025 the group should have two brands with annual sales close to 1 billion euros — Carolina Herrera and Paco Rabanne — including their fragrance and fashion activities.
Carolina Herrera has other top-selling fragrances, too, such as Bad Boy — already among the 20 bestselling men’s scents globally, despite a limited rollout — and 212.
Trias Arraut described Carolina Herrera as a well-balanced brand. “Good Girl is not the only pillar we stand on,” she said.
Barcelona, Spain-based Puig has manufactured the brand’s fragrances since introducing Carolina Herrera New York in 1988.
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