Victoria Beckham on her new VBB fragrance line
While the influx of celebrity beauty brands feels very of this decade, there's no disputing that scent has a long, star-studded history. The latest name to join fragrance's roster of famous names under their own enterprise is Victoria Beckham, who has steadily been building a reputation within the beauty sphere for some time. From glitzy single eyeshadows to smudgeless tubing mascaras (a favourite of the Bazaar beauty team), VB Beauty has held its own against Hollywood product fatigue; but will her first venture into perfume achieve the same?
Launching with three genderless sophisticated scents, the range draws on stages of her personal life and its parallels to pop culture: Portofino ’97 (a romantic scent embodying her first romantic getaway with husband David), Suite 302 (inspired by whirlwind weekends in Paris) and San Ysidro Drive (a motivating aroma anchored in California).
We caught up with Beckham and master perfumer Jerome Epinette to discuss first fragrances, scent-spiration, and how the former Spice Girl chooses between her three new creations.
"My first perfumes were empty fragrance bottles from my mum’s friend – and I mean empty, not even a tiny bit of fragrance left in them," Beckham told Bazaar. "They were these beautiful Chanel bottles and I would have them on display in my room." Since then, she's never found one that felt completely her, she adds. "In more recent years, before starting to develop my own scents, I played around with lots of different perfumes, never quite finding my signature one. But what is interesting is that when I investigated fragrances that I have been drawn to over the years, they have all been Jerome creations. It was why I was adamant that I wanted to collaborate with him for my fragrance collection."
Epinette, whose critically-acclaimed nose has created worked for Atelier Cologne, Byredo and Ellis Brooklyn, is the perfumer behind the three scents.
"Victoria gave me specific direction based on her memories, her trips and her experiences that she wanted me to capture in the fragrance collection," he said. "The first step was to understand the messaging, the moments she wanted to deliver and all the emotion that she wanted to convey. I needed to try and to understand the vocabulary and the way she was talking about these experiences and, once I understood exactly, I could start creating fragrance in order to capture those moments and her emotions."
Victoria Beckham Beauty Portofino '97
Victoria Beckham Beauty Suite 302
Victoria Beckham Beauty San Ysidro Drive
In terms of her personal perfume rotation, Beckham revealed that there's a day-to-night distinction between her three new scents.
"Currently I am wearing San Ysidro Drive during the daytime, I play with wearing Suite 302 if I am going out in the evening, and I was wearing Portofino a lot this summer in Miami."
True to Beckham's branding, the packaging is impossibly chic, but it's what's inside that is all the more captivating.
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