Paris Hilton’s Can Can is an exercise in pinkness. The comfortable, round bottomed bottle has a pink feather on it, and the asymmetrical top is tinged with pinkness. It is packaged in a black and pink jacket featuring Paris Hilton lifting up her bright red skirts on three out of four sides of the box, Moulin Rouge-style. Even more terrifying: it had a video release. Luca Turin in Perfumes: the Guide presumptively summed it up in three words: “Can it, please.”
Because it’s made by Paris Hilton (via Parlux Fragrances), one might be inclined to acknowledge it with a simple scowl, due to the audacity it exercised by polluting Perfumania next to Black and Lolita Lempicka, where I bought a bottle at the buy one, get one for $10 sale. It had an inviting, powdery cotton candy topnote on the test strip, and I wanted to see if it followed through.
Can Can followed through. Unlike other (terrible) celebrity perfumes like Queen by Queen Latifah, it isn’t the least bit cloying. The sillage is perfect and the lasting power is impressive. There is a bit of rose, a bit of peach, a bit of orange blossom. It has a sweet, sugary cotton candy base accompanied by a generic pink sweetness that floats from top to base of its trajectory. But what puts Can Can above the fray is that powdery note, usually seen in more highbrow perfumes like Chamade. This note proved to work well in several markets, because Can Can is a terrific seller.
All that being said, Can Can is still not complex. It has a simple, immediate appeal, like the star it represents. It’s marketed to look like Moulin Rouge, but it isn’t terribly edgy or sexy; it is simply a girly uplifting scent to wear in the daytime, when you need a break from the cluttered handbag smells of the mature woman. Sometimes, you just want to go to the mall.
Perfumer: Jean Claude Delville
Price Range: Relatively Inexpensive
Recommended Occasion: Casual
Release Year: 2007
My Rating: 6.5