Who’d pay $99 to smell like Donald Trump? Eau d’Insurrection, anyone…?

As he prepares to run again for office – and pay $355m in fraud trial damages – the former president has launched his-and-her fragrances, with a gold stopper shaped like a quiffed head. Could Victory47 really be a splash-it-all-over hit, asks Rowan Pelling

Donald Trump has launched a new fragrance, Victory47 (Supplied)

I thought the most outlandish celebrity-scented product I’d see in my lifetime was Gwyneth Paltrow marketing a candle called This Smells Like My Vagina on her website Goop for $75. But, in a race to the, um, bottom, no one’s going to outdo the nuclear levels of toxic chutzpah wielded by Donald Trump.

The former president’s riposte to being fined $355m and deemed malodorous by former GOP congressman Adam Kinzinger is to launch Victory47, a new fragrance in For Him and For Her versions, at a mere $99 a pop. To put this name in its full audacious (some would say delusional) context, the next elected president of the US will be number 47 in its political lineage.

And while Trump may be leading the contenders, he hasn’t yet secured the nomination and faces a host of other lawsuits. So “coming up smelling of Trump” may yet mean a staycation in hotel clink.

He may be a legendary “ontry-preneurre”, but Trump doesn’t seem to have clocked that people who make fortunes out of scent always hitch their wagons to indisputably fragrant celebs, like Keira Knightley, Adam Driver, Juliette Binoche and Marilyn Monroe (who famously said Chanel No 5 was the only thing she wore in bed). When you spray on a fragrance fronted by one of these demi-gods, you’re aspiring to a wee stardust-sprinkle of their allure.

What perfumiers don’t ever do is focus a campaign round someone recently described by a fellow Republican as reeking of “armpits, ketchup, a butt and make-up”, all mixed-up in a blender.

With this in mind, the copywriters for Victory47 by Trump deserve to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. They rhapsodise that “a crisp opening of citrus blends into a cedar heart, underpinned by a rich base of leather and amber, crafting a commanding presence”.

It is a cologne “for the movers, the shakers, and the history makers… splash on a bit of Victory and own every room you step into.” Well, sure thing – if you count a man with wooden emotions encouraging his supporters to storm the Capitol as “making history”, their next stop being a prison cell.

The marketing men wisely steer clear of trying to fully describe the weird, homunculus gold Trump head that is the “collector’s cap” for the bottle. Although I like to think that thousands of years from now, a traveller from an antique land will stumble across it, noting the golden quiff which yet survives and the label that announces: “Inhale my cologne, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Women aren’t excluded from Trump’s cedar-hearted munificence, although the femme version comes with a golden “T” top – meaning the ladies can’t pull off the Donald’s head every time they want to spritz a little Eau d’Insurrection.

We’re told that with this scent, “you wear more than a fragrance – you wear a statement”. You surely do: one that proclaims you fan-girl Marjorie Taylor Greene, want to wipe out Roe v Wade and don’t mind being grabbed by the pussy.

But the best detail of all is in the small print. Every photograph of the Trump products on sale (which include Never Surrender, his new $399 gold hightops that bear a passing resemblance to Kanye’s Yeezys) come with the disclaimer: “The images shown are for illustration purposes only and may not be an exact representation of the product.” Furthermore, you’re asked to part with your cash for products that won’t be shipped until June 2024. If a week is a long time in politics, four months is all eternity in a consumer world where Amazon ships the same day.

It’s fair to say the only perfume project that would be more outrageous than this one would be if Vladimir Putin was signed up to re-launch Dior’s Poison.