Liz Taylor set the bar for celebrity perfumes

Elizabeth Taylor, who died Wednesday at 79, might have been a movie legend, but she was a marketing pioneer. While actresses had endorsed fragrances as far back as the 1950s, Taylor took it a step further by becoming the first celebrity to launch her own line of perfume—White Diamonds in 1991. Taylor did perfume before every starlet had to have her own. Watching her ads today, her influence is clear. Nowadays, you simply can’t pimp a fragrance without a confusing, enigmatic commercial. Check out one spot below, and another after the jump, along with a handful of Taylor’s movie trailers from a time when all you had to do to sell a movie was to say Elizabeth was in it.