What a stink! Bella Freud's perfume brand goes broke after challenging year
Her father bequeathed a £96 million fortune, but has Bella Freud mislaid her own Midas touch, for the moment at least?
I ask because the acclaimed fashion designer — one of 14 children Lucian Freud acknowledged as his own — is bidding farewell to what has been described as her 'luxury fragrance brand', Bella Freud Parfum.
Despite selling scented candles at £50 a piece and, in a familial nod to her great-grandfather, Sigmund Freud, a creation called 'Psychoanalysis Eau de Parfum' — £165 for 100ml — the company is now in liquidation.
It's a rare setback for Bella who has enjoyed success in interior design, film-making and publishing, as well making clothes which enjoy a 'cult following' among the likes of Sienna Miller, Olivia Wilde and Kate Moss, — the last of whom posed, naked and pregnant, for Bella's father, with the resultant portrait selling for £3.9 million.
Bella declines to comment on the fate of her eponymous fragrance business, but observers note that its parent company, Bella Freud Ltd, has itself battled through a challenging year which has seen its assets dwindle from £900,000 to just over £100,000.
![Bella has enjoyed success in interior design, film-making and publishing, as well making clothes which enjoy a 'cult following' among the likes of Sienna Miller , Olivia Wilde and Kate Moss (Bella and Moss pictured at the first anniversary of Cosmoss)](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/06/28/23/86717553-13581873-image-a-10_1719614838338.jpg)
Bella has enjoyed success in interior design, film-making and publishing, as well making clothes which enjoy a 'cult following' among the likes of Sienna Miller , Olivia Wilde and Kate Moss (Bella and Moss pictured at the first anniversary of Cosmoss)
![Bella declines to comment on the fate of her eponymous fragrance business, but its parent company, Bella Freud Ltd, has battled through a challenging year with assets dwindling from £900,000 to just over £100,000](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/06/28/23/86717551-13581873-image-a-11_1719614879360.jpg)
Bella declines to comment on the fate of her eponymous fragrance business, but its parent company, Bella Freud Ltd, has battled through a challenging year with assets dwindling from £900,000 to just over £100,000
![Among the perfumes is a nod to her famous grandfather Sigmund Freud - 'Psychoanalysis Eau de Parfum' ¿ £165 for 100ml](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/06/28/23/86717555-13581873-image-a-12_1719614916998.jpg)
Among the perfumes is a nod to her famous grandfather Sigmund Freud - 'Psychoanalysis Eau de Parfum' — £165 for 100ml
Its current summer sale — on an array of merchandise from pinstripe trousers and hoodies to beanie hats and cushion covers — has offered discounts of as much as 70 per cent.
One thing is certain: little, if anything, will disconcert Bella, 63, who was born in the same year as two of her half-sisters, Isobel — one of Freud's four children by Suzy Boyt – and Lucy, one of four more he fathered by Katherine McAdam.
As a child, she and her younger sister, Esther, accompanied their mother, Bernardine Coverley, to Morocco where they lived in a rundown Marrakesh hotel.
The experience inspired Esther to write her first novel, Hideous Kinky, later made into a film starring Kate Winslet.
Separated from her husband, White Mischief author James Fox, Bella has reflected: 'I used to wonder what is going to happen...now I think, "How am I going to make this happen?"'
Stand by for the next Freud chapter.