PROFILE
Lana Del Rey is the face of Gucci’s newest fragrance. By Souzan Michael
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 ASMR 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 L.A. “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.
Thirtythreeyearold Del Rey has formed a close artistic relationship with Gucci 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 laughs.
Michele’s love of extravagance is on full display in the campaign video, which stars Del Rey and Leto doing everyday things like grocery shopping and laundry—while completely clad in Gucci and accompanied by exotic animals, like an ostrich racing down the soup aisle. According
“I was going to create my own fragrance just for fun. Literally the next week, Gucci asked me to be the face of theirs, so I took it as a sign.”
to Del Rey, Michele was inspired by “his own strange idea of Hollywood” as someone coming 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 has wrapped her upcoming album, Norman Fucking Rockwell, produced by Jack Antonoff (of the band Bleachers), who Del Rey insists is the most easygoing producer she has ever worked with. That laidback nature is reflected in the album, she says, thanks to its relaxed, “not too bombastic” sound. In fact, everything about the album is so chill that she has no plans to partake in 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. Last year, she revealed she’d written a book of longform poems that she plans to release by summer. “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 11thgrade poetry class?”