Obsession

Calvin Klein presents Obsession as a spicy amber, intense and provocative, a blend of botanicals and rare woods that evokes the emotion lodged between love and madness. Wikiparfum files it among the ambers, citrus subfamily; Osmoz among the vanilla orientals.

Calvin Klein’s first great fragrance success

Obsession came out in the spring of 1985 at Calvin Klein Cosmetics, which Robert R. Taylor had bought in 1980. Robin, on Now Smell This, calls it the brand’s first fragrance blockbuster, far ahead of Calvin Klein for women and Calvin for men, both since discontinued.

Calvin Klein told Women’s Wear Daily in January 1985 that the name was as big as a movie poster, in the image of a decade in which everyone was obsessed. He said he wanted to evoke a woman who allows herself a romantic obsession and invites a man to share it.

A department-store success

Robin reports that the fragrance, carried by steamy advertising and scent strips slipped into magazines, sold out in many stores before the first shipment even arrived. By 1987 it was rivaling Giorgio, then the top-selling fragrance in the United States.

The brand says today that Obsession revolutionized prestige fragrance with its feverish intensity. It still sells it as an eau de parfum, in 30, 50 and 100 ml; the line gave rise to Obsession for Men and, in 2017, to Obsessed, which takes up its name and its images.