Locally concocted: Prince's new perfume

For Prince - the famously secretive, richly enigmatic musical legend - a "top note" might be a high C; an octave or so up if he reaches for his falsetto as he has on hits like "Purple Rain" or his new song, "Guitar."

But for those in the perfume business, a "top note" is the first scent you smell; the one between leaving the bottle and hitting the skin.

It turns out that Prince is conversant about the latter, now that he's entered the perfume game. Just yesterday, on lucky 7/7/07, Prince debuted his own scent - 3121, just like his last album and his Las Vegas club - in Minneapolis, several weeks before his new CD, Planet Earth, is due in stores.

Lots of celebrities have perfume lines - Britney Spears, Smokey Robinson, Elizabeth Taylor. Still, somehow, Prince perfume seems odd. This is the guy who protested his first record label, Warner Bros., by writing the word Slave on his face, and changed his name to a glyph.

But perhaps the strangest thing about 3121 is that it's being made in Huntingdon Valley by an independent company named Revelations, owned by a married couple who happen to be veterans of the cosmetics trade.

Larry J. Couey, the owner of Revelations Perfume & Cosmetics, got the Prince gig by accident. While visiting an agent in Los Angeles in August 2006, Couey overheard a conference call with Prince's former label. The musician's perfume discussions with a larger cosmetics company had broken down, and he wanted to find a smaller independent firm.

"I was in the right place at the right time," says Couey, who gave his age as mid-50s. (Prince, through his label, declined to comment for this article.)

Revelations, started by the Coueys in 1998, is a small, private operation with a development office on Veit Road and a 35,000-square-foot packaging and assembly plant just blocks away. There's nothing handsome or ornate about their location. Heck, the walls of Revelations aren't even purple - Prince's favored color.

Nonetheless, soon after his L.A. trip, Couey found himself at Prince's Paisley Park house and studio in Minneapolis, with Prince's business manager and two twin dancers in the room.

"Prince was wearing a black 3121 shirt with white pants when we first met," says Couey. "It was the most casual I've ever seen him, as I've only seen him wearing impeccable suits and dressed to perfection."

Few people get to have private meetings with Prince. But the vibe was welcoming, with candles burning everywhere.

"It smelled relaxed," says Couey.

The two hit it off immediately. They share Midwestern roots (Couey grew up in Wisconsin, a little over an hour from Minneapolis). Each man is quiet and businesslike.

But Prince had one key question: Why had Couey named his company Revelations?

Couey was working as a marketer in the consumer product division for Bath & Body Works, flying between the coasts, when an old friend in Ohio had a serious car accident and wound up in a coma for months.

Visits with his friend got Couey to thinking of his family - his wife, Carol, and three adult daughters he put through college. "The revelation was that I could stay closer to home, be with my family and make a smaller business without having to run around for a big company," he said.

He had done it before. In 1981, Couey cofounded Parfums de Coeur, a company that he sold to his partner by the end of the decade. So along with Carol - a Havertown native with a background in scent development at Ralph Lauren Fragrances - Couey eschewed corporate life to find his own niche.

Prince understood that. He left Warners in 1996, had his own label for a time, and currently uses big labels to distribute his records, rather than signing up with them.

And so the deal was done: Revelations would fast-track Prince's 3121 scent (normally the process takes 15 to 24 months) with the singer/guitarist in on every aspect.

Revelations had worked with other personalities on fragrance. Among the 14 fragrances Revelations makes is Stacie J - Golden, created for the model/Apprentice contestant Stacie J. There's also Stoked, a surf-inspired fragrance made for Bethany Hamilton, the young blond surfer who lost her arm in a shark attack in Hawaii.

Small-timers compared to Prince. Marla Beck, CEO of Blue Mercury, finds it interesting that an indie scent-maker like Revelations was able to land a "get" like Prince.

A celebrity scent "is a risky proposition," says Beck, who was not familiar with Revelations. "Those scents either really fail or really succeed."

Couey described Prince as the "most creative" person he has worked with. "Not just music but branding," he said. "What the package should look like, fragrance development."

Keeping with Prince's love of all things 7 (still curious about what 3121 stands for? Add it up), Couey and his wife had six more meetings with Prince. They were held at all hours of the day at recording studios, dressing rooms at Prince's 3121 club in Las Vegas, and his suite at the Rio Hotel.

"We needed to be pretty flexible," said Carol Couey.

Aside from the late-night rendezvous, the Coueys say there was nothing eccentric about Prince. "He's a perfectionist who doesn't endeavor in anything he can't be passionate about," said Larry Couey. "He makes you more passionate."

And astute. Remember those candles? Prince is a candle fanatic and a fragrance fiend. He'd bring the Coueys into rooms where a candle had been burning for several hours so they'd get a feel for each scent.

"Sometimes we'd bring one of our perfumers to detect what notes were involved," Larry Couey said.

There are three stages of a fragrance to consider in its development. You smell the top note when a scent just comes out of the bottle and onto your skin. The mid-note evolves when the scent begins to blend with skin and settle. And finally, the dry-down occurs about 10 minutes later when the fragrance has had time to bind with your skin and its natural scent.

"You have to have success in all three stages to be a blockbuster," Couey said.

3121 contains hints of jasmine, tuberose and bergamot, with musk on the dry-down. "That's very sensual - Prince really liked that," Couey said.

After nine months of fine-tuning those scents, Prince and the Coueys moved on to the bottle. They decided on a bevel-cut heavy glass with a 22-karat gold label in - of course - a purplish box.

In tune with Prince's numerical obsession, the 3121 perfume collection, which comes in 100-mL, 50-mL and 30-mL sizes, will be sold at prices that add up to 7. Gift sets are $77 and $250. The body crème is $43. The purse spray is $52.

All this leads, obviously, to yesterday's launch date - 7/7/07. For all bottles sold that day, Prince planned to donate 7 percent of the sales to seven global charities.

Too much? The Coueys say no. While Prince joked that people said his scent should be dubbed "Purple Rain" ("he knew that would be cheesy," Carol Couey says), Larry Couey insists there were no unreasonable requests or demands.

"We're our own most demanding critics," he said. "Prince just happened to be as passionate as we are."

For more information on where to buy 3121, go to www.3121.com or www.3121perfume.comEndText