GUILTY PLEASURE
THE ENIGMATIC LANA DEL REY STROLLS INTO THE WORLD OF FRAGRANCE
Lana Del Rey is Gucci’s smelliest muse yet.
LANA DEL REY has an impressive following within the ASMR community. Thanks to the singer’s signature breathy speaking voice, her recorded interviews have been spliced together to make sensory compilations that are admittedly difficult to turn off. So should you ever find yourself on the phone with her, prepare to enter a state of total, uninterrupted Zen.
“I was going to create my own fragrance just for fun,” says Del Rey in her characteristically captivating tone when we reach her in LA. “Literally the next week, Gucci asked me to be the face of theirs, so I took it as a sign.” The new iteration of Gucci Guilty, called Pour Femme, is more complex than the original while still maintaining the sense of playfulness the Italian brand is known for. (Jared Leto fronts the male version of the scent, Pour Homme.) “It reminds me of something I’d have worn in high school,” she tells us — and means it as a compliment, explaining that it’s the type of fragrance that makes its wearer feel adventurous, thanks to a bold blend of citrus, pink pepper, lilac and patchouli.
Thirty-three-year-old Del Rey has formed a close artistic relationship with Gucci’s creative director, Alessandro Michele. “We [both] have fantastical points of reference,” she explains. But while for Del Rey, fantasy is reserved for the occasional moment, it’s woven into Michele’s everyday life. “Alessandro is always ‘More is more’, whereas I’m like ‘Less and less... to the point where I become invisible,’” she says, laughing.
Michele’s love of extravagance is on full display in the campaign video, which stars Del Rey and Leto doing everyday things such as grocery shopping and laundry — while completely clad in Gucci and accompanied by exotic animals, including an ostrich racing down the soup aisle. According to Del Rey, Michele was inspired by “his own strange idea of Hollywood” as someone who hails from Rome.
But the singer is happy to call California home. “Living here, you can tell what season it is by the [smell of] the flowers,” she says. There’s an airy optimism in Del Rey’s voice that might surprise fans of the music industry’s most beloved sad girl. Maybe it’s the fact that she’s wrapped her latest album, Norman Fucking Rockwell, produced by Jack Antonoff, who Del Rey insists is the most easygoing producer she has ever worked with. That laid-back nature is reflected in the album, she says. In fact, everything about it is so chill, she has no plans for a big record launch. “The music goes where it’s supposed to when it’s not shoved in any direction,” she says.
Clearly, Del Rey is in a creative headspace. She’s also written a book of longform poems, Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass. “I wouldn’t say the poems are better [than the album], but they’re more classic. I don’t even know how I learned the different stanzas,” she laughs. “Like, did I learn this in my 11th grade poetry class?”
E“It REMINDS ME of SOMETHING I’d HAVE WORN in high school”