In case you don’t know, musician Ethel Cain is somewhat of a fragrance freak. Thanks to a nearly 90-minute YouTube video where she showcased her personal collection of scents, our guest beauty editor for this issue was born. Here, the superstar takes a whiff of fall’s buzziest new releases to recommend what you should be spritzing on for the season.
LA COLLECTION PRIVÉE CHRISTIAN DIOR BOIS D’ARGENT ESPRIT DE PARFUM
★★★☆☆
WHAT ARE YOUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS?
“This smells like a lipstick, or a powder puff—very clean, very soapy. Almost like you’ve just powdered a very expensive baby. A small Norwegian child.”
WHO WOULD WEAR THIS SCENT?
“A ghost baby that is wearing a diaper, wandering around the halls of a very nice, old mansion, of course.”
Byredo Alto Astral
★★★★★
WHAT ARE YOUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS?
“I hate the beach, but this makes me want to go to the beach. This smells like you have gone on vacation. You are hot. Everyone around you is hot. The sun has just set. The torches have just been lit. The music is just starting. The drinks are getting poured. You’re not drunk yet, but you know you are about to. It’s 2016, and life is good—life is so good. This smells like the best vacation of your whole life.”
WHO WOULD WEAR THIS SCENT?
“100%, it’s Leslie Bibb wearing this while staying at The White Lotus hotel in Thailand.”
TOM FORD BEAUTY BLACK ORCHID RESERVE
★★★★☆
WHAT ARE YOUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS?
“This smells like an Italian Mob wife in New Jersey waiting for her car to get finished. She has a giant person on the crook of her arm, she’s asking to speak to your manager, and she has on Gucci sunglasses. This smells like a woman who is a hard ass.”
WHO WOULD WEAR THIS SCENT?
“100% Edna from The Incredibles would wear this. It’s for someone sitting at a runway show. I would wear this to Fashion Week, but not in the United States. This is for Paris or Milan.”
PENHALIGON’S THE CUT
★★★★★
WHAT ARE YOUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS?
“It’s very earthy, very green. This reminds me of a day when I was getting ready to play Electric Picnic in Ireland. I wandered out to the very edge of the back area where the artists were, and there was a weird stone wall that was crumbling, and a tree that was branched over, with a little tunnel into it, and I crawled into it and just sat under this tree, in the dirt, and did my warm-up there. It was so earthy and fragrant, and kind of wet because it was a very misty, cool day, and this just smells like I’ve gone and taken a nap [there].”
WHO WOULD WEAR THIS SCENT?
“Dame Maggie Smith as Mrs. Medlock from the live-action Secret Garden. Medlock is kind of like the housemistress of the house. She walks around with her big key chain, and she’s got her hair up like a Gibson Girl. She goes into the kitchen often to make sure the cooks are doing it right. And while she’s in there, she kind of absorbs the smell of the herbs before she goes to skulk around the castle, and the smell seeps into her hair.”
DRIES VAN NOTEN BEAUTY HAVANA GOLD
★★★★★
WHAT ARE YOUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS?
“[It’s like] you just took a weed gummy. You’re watching a YouTube essay about a Neo-noir gumshoe detective who’s solving a murder in Miami in 1984. You’re at a scene where you’re inside his office and he’s talking in like an ASMR voice about the evidence, but there’s like a fake VHS filter over the video, and there’s vapor wave music playing in the background—like a [hint of] false nostalgia of the 80s.”
WHO WOULD WEAR THIS SCENT?
“It has this leathery, clean gentleman energy. Very distinguished. [It’s for a] metrosexual, but very masculine man. This smells like [it’s for] Tom Selleck, if he were a bit less rugged, or Benjamin Bratt in Miss Congeniality.”
CHANEL CHANCE EAU SPLENDIDE
★★★☆☆
WHAT ARE YOUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS?
“I am [either] seven years old, and I’m in a bubble bath, or I’m a very beautiful woman who would help you in the library whenever you’re looking for a book. It’s very feminine, and it smells like listening to Sarah McLachlan on a rainy day.”
WHO WOULD WEAR THIS SCENT?
“She’s a do-gooder. She’s a nice girl, with a normal job, and is kind to everyone she’s ever met. Like one of my mom’s best friends from her women’s Bible study group that I remember from when I was a kid. Just a very normal, stand-up woman who is very well respected by everybody in the community.”
HERMÈS BARENIA INTENSE
★★★☆☆
WHAT ARE YOUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS?
“This makes me hungry. This smells like your friend invited you to go visit their family in Italy for the summer, and they had a hot uncle who has a thick head of hair at 58 years old and a mustache for days. He’s flirting with you and picking on you equally. This smells like dinner with his family; it’s very rich.”
WHO WOULD WEAR THIS SCENT?
“I feel like I would meet Grace Jones and she would smell like this— mixed with a fresh cigarette. Just delicious, herbal, and rich. This is not only for a very attractive woman, but this is someone who would probably be mean to you in a very hot way. A woman with money and power.”
Tom Ford Beauty Fucking Fabulous Eau de Parfum
★★★★★
WHAT ARE YOUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS?
“This smells green, but it smells dark purple, but it smells black. It’s spicy. The lavender and the clary sage are so evident. This is an LBD perfume.”
WHO WOULD WEAR THIS SCENT?
“This smells like a really hot man you’d be on vacation with.”
Tom Ford Beauty Black Lacquer Eau de Parfum
★★★★★
WHAT ARE YOUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS?
“This smells mechanical. This is entirely male, [it’s] so masculine. This is delicious. It’s so spicy and mechanical and makes me hungry. This smells like a cookout.”
WHO WOULD WEAR THIS SCENT?
“You know who wears this? Did you watch that movie, Titane? I haven’t watched it myself, but from all the descriptions of this film, and everything I know about it, she gets a plate put in her skull after a car accident, and then the whole movie, I think she just has sex with her car. It’s like a crazy, weird French movie. She would wear this and be like, ‘Am I seeing my boyfriend?’”
This story appears in the pages of V156: now available for purchase!
Photography Greg Delves (Ray Brown Productions)
Guest Beauty Editor Ethel Cain
Editor/Interview Kevin Ponce
Location Noho Productions
Photo Assistant Vasilios Smaragdas
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