Pop power group STEPS launch new fragrance Guilty Pleasure at Leicester Square’s Café de Paris

With a certain amount of trepidation, The Upcoming attended the suitably glitzy launch night of pop super group STEPS’ new fragrance at Café de Paris in Leicester Square. Given the moniker Guilty Pleasure to reflect STEPS’ music (come on now, we all know the hits word for word), the heavy fruity floral scent is packaged in a fitting mirror ball bottle.

A full house of die-hard STEPS fans, both men and women in their 20s and 30s (no teeny boppers here) packed out the venue to see their favourite band who are riding high on a nostalgia wave after recently reforming, touring a number one greatest hits album and completing two series of their SKY TV reality show!

Canapés and copious amounts of wine and champagne fuelled a fun evening of camp and kitsch, topped off with a Q&A session from the band and a live performance to an ecstatic audience of fans that included the hits Deeper Shade of Blue and Tragedy, and for the very first time the band’s new single, a pop ballad Light Up The World from the new album of the same name.

One group of ladies we spoke to informed us that they had been fans of the group since their teens. They all worked for New Look and had formed a common bond over their love of the group. Upon hearing of the evening’s event through a friend of a friend, they jumped at the chance to meet their idols and came to the event straight from work. One even informed knowingly that they each knew all the moves to the Tragedy dance.

Post-performance, the group’s members – Claire, Lisa, H, Lee and Faye, who seem to have aged very little since the first time around over 10 years ago – mingled happily with their fans. Chatting, signing autographs and posing for photos, they proved to be for all their stardom, very down to earth everyday people, a bit mystified by their own fame and enjoying every minute of their comeback. We spoke with Lee and Claire who were overjoyed at the turnout “surprised there are so many of you” (Lee) and informed us that despite all the “blood sweat and tears, lots of tears” (Claire) they were very happy to be back on stage doing what they do best and entertaining their fans.

STEPS know their market and are not afraid to embrace it and in these troubled times we all need a bit of light-hearted fun to ease our souls. As the fragrance tag line goes: “We all have a Guilty Pleasure, it would be a Tragedy not to.”

STEPS’ Guilty Pleasure, £18.49, is available from all good fragrance retailers from November 2012, just in time for the Christmas season!

The band’s new single Light Up The World is out on 22nd October, and the album of the same name drops November 2012, accompanied in December by a series of intimate tour dates, Christmas with Steps.

Visit STEPS’ official website here.

Ian Michael Turner

Photos: Ian Michael Turner