White Diamonds (1991)

While Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion was hugely successful, no one could have anticipated the success that Elizabeth would have with its follow-up, White Diamonds. “The company was not expecting anything like this,” Peter England, the president of Elizabeth Arden, told Kate Andersen Brower, Elizabeth’s authorized biographer. “They were expecting fifteen to twenty million net sales. We were doing one hundred million net sales and she was getting fifteen percent. She was getting fifteen million every year. There’s been no other fragrance like it.”

These Have Always Brought Me Luck

The 1991 launch of White Diamonds was backed by an estimated $20 million promotional campaign. At the heart of the blitz was a cinematic, black-and-white commercial that is now nearly as iconic as the fragrance itself. In “White Diamonds Starring Elizabeth Taylor,” she interrupts a “high-stakes poker game” when one player is on the verge of discarding his hand. “Not so fast, Von Ryan. These have always brought me luck,” she says, removing her diamond earrings and dropping them in the pot.

It was filmed in Acapulco, a part of Mexico that was close to Elizabeth’s heart (she married Mike Todd in a small tropical village nearby).

The advertisement, directed by Terry Bedford of Epoch Films, originally aired on TV as a sixty-second commercial (there would be additional cuts of varying lengths). A longer, two-minute and forty-five-second version played on televisions at department store perfume counters, and Parfums International went the extra mile to make it a real event. “We’re going to set it up as a ‘theater’ event, as her latest movie,” Tom Moloney, Vice President of Marketing for Parfums International, told the New York Times ahead of the launch. “We’re going to hand out tickets and serve little bags of popcorn.”

Bruce Weber photographed the now-iconic print advertisements (Herb Ritts would photograph Elizabeth, wearing a diamond necklace by Louis Glick, for the range of White Diamonds bath products introduced the following year). Elizabeth launched the White Diamonds promotional tour on September 12, 1991, taking a short break from the media blitz to walk down the aisle with Larry Fortensky on October 6, which only helped to generate more buzz for the fragrance.

Since its debut, White Diamonds has been a fixture on the list of top ten selling perfumes. By 2018, it had made more than $1.5 billion, earning the title of “the most successful celebrity fragrance of all time.” Two variations (known in the fragrance industry as “flanker” scents) of White Diamonds—Sparkling White Diamonds (2000) and Brilliant White Diamonds (2001)—were released in Elizabeth’s lifetime. Since her death in 2011, House of Taylor has continued to expand Elizabeth’s fragrance empire, adding five additional fragrances inspired by the wildly successful White Diamonds to the collection: White Diamonds Lustre (2014), White Diamonds Night (2016), Love and White Diamonds (2017), White Diamonds en Rouge (2019), White Diamonds Legacy (2021), and White Diamonds Icon (2026).