When Justin Bieber’s Someday, the first fragrance from the teenage singing star, was released this autumn it broke all predicted sales forecasts and is on track to become the best-selling fragrance of 2011. Some experts are saying it’s the most successful fragrance launch in history.

So, would you buy it or would you, well, turn up your nose because it’s a celebrity fragrance. Can such mass-market perfumes be anywhere near as good as small, artisanal scents made by serious perfume makers?

Consider the following: Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds, the best-selling celebrity fragrance of all time, was launched in 1991. It is deemed a classic perfume (ie not just a classic celebrity perfume) and last year had global sales of $61.3m. “Celebrity fragrances, like celebrities themselves, can sometimes be elegant and alluring and sometimes vacant, brain-dead white trash,” says Linda Pilkington of the exclusive perfume brand Ormonde Jayne. “They are not all bad. J Lo’s and Naomi Campbell’s are a couple I have smelt in the past and thought they could pass the ‘Pepsi challenge’ if one was blindfolded.”