Gigi Hadid and legendary designer Michael Kors have a longstanding professional partnership, as well as one beautiful friendship. Over the years, the duo has traveled around the world together to countless dreamy destinations, and they share a passion for living the beach life. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that the two would team up for the fashion house’s latest fragrance campaign for Wonderlust, a scent designed to make you feel like you’re on vacay.
Speaking of which, a few months back, the pair jetted off to Turks and Caicos for the campaign’s photo shoot — a working vacation, if you will — and had a blast bathing in the blue waters, relaxing in the white sand, and of course, creating the imagery that would set the tone for the campaign.
The fragrance features notes of jasmine and almond cream, and Hadid and Kors are sharing why it’s worth a spot in your perfume collection. Sitting down with a group of beauty editors, the pair revealed how they feel when they wear Wonderlust, what it reminds them of, and a few traveling tidbits, just for fun.
Allure: What are the smells that remind you of going on holiday?
Michael Kors: “Oh, my God, jasmine always, yarrow; in America, it’s always a fresh-cut lawn or grass. Also, my grandfather — when I was growing up, we would always go to the beach on holiday, and he wore a cologne that had a lot of lemon and citrus in it. And we were just talking about Thailand and Bali, how when you arrive in someplace like Thailand, it’s humid, and there’s this heaviness in the air that’s amazing.”
Gigi Hadid: “I think that same feeling of the sun, when the heat hits the jasmine or heats up whatever tropical flower it is, and how it changes the smell of the air — it’s a sweetness that only happens in the summer, I think.”
MK: “We all have to remember that when we’re sitting in the gray, cold winter air.”
Allure: And how does it make you feel when you wear Wonderlust?
GH: “For me, when I wear it and close my eyes, it brings back that warm feeling, and it makes you feel energized and positive. It reminds me a lot of the trip and shooting it because that’s what the whole campaign and commercial are about — just that feeling it gives you of freedom and waking up in the summer and doing what makes you happy.”
Allure: Like that feeling when you’re right about to go on a trip?
GH: “Exactly.”
MK: “Doing yoga and wearing high heels.” [Laughs.]
Allure: You both travel so much for work and for pleasure. What’s one place you haven’t been to yet?
MK: “Oh, gosh, it feels like we’ve hit every corner of the earth. But all right, I have two: I still haven’t been to the Seychelles, which is crazy because I’m such a beach bum. That, and I haven’t been to Namibia in Africa. And, like, I will go. And I’ve only been to Australia twice, but I need to spend more time there. I just realized all the places I mentioned are warm, with sand.”
GH: “I would love to go toNew Zealand or Iceland. And this might be kind of lame, but Disney World — I’ve never been.”
MK: “Oh, my God, I’ve never been either! We’re Disney virgins.”
GH: “Can you do your next campaign there?”
MK: “We have a house in Florida. You’ll come for the weekend, and then we’ll go for a ride.”
Allure: As you’ve gone through different phases in your life, how has your attraction toward different scents shifted?
MK: “Well, fragrance to me — you can kind of think about different spots in your life. I’ve lived through different decades of life. When I was a teenager and I first started wearing fragrance, everything was very heavy, very musky, very intense. I mean, I was 14 and just dousing myself in it. And I realize now, I was new to fragrance, but it was also the times. In the late ‘70s and ’80s, everyone wore really heavy fragrances. But now you’d say, ‘Ooh, that’s crazy.’ Then I went through a whole period when I decided I didn’t want to wear anything. Now I feel like I’m on my third chapter, so I want something memorable but not that knocks you out. That’s the thing — you want something special that people can wear every day. You don’t want it to be so natural that people can never smell it; you want people to say, ‘What is that?’ I think that’s fabulous.”
GH: “I think I’ve always gone toward floral and sweet my whole life, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found if I get sent a heavier fragrance, I mix it with some of the lighter floral scents because I feel like it can move into different periods of the day. So yeah, I’m opening up more to deeper scents, more complicated ones.”
MK: “I think when you’re really young, you go for the bang, and then it starts getting a little bit more layered and sophisticated.”
GH: “Mysterious.”
MK: “Exactly, so people say, ‘What is that?’ To me, that’s the most interesting thing when we’re creating something.”
GH: “I love that it has sandalwood in it.”
MK: “Right, it’s musky but it’s not traditional.”
Allure: What’s the link between Wonderlust and Gigi?
MK: “Well, the whole point of the fragrance is that people live busy lives; we’re all doing too much, and you can either have life take you down and make you sad and depressed, or you can be optimistic and energetic and stay curious no matter what comes your way. And that’s her. She is full of optimism, she’s super smart, and she’s up for anything. She’s also obsessed with traveling like I am. I mean, if someone said to me, ‘Do you want to go to lunch in Vancouver because they have really great shrimp?’ I’d say, ‘Okay, sure, let’s go.’ And she would, too.”
Allure: Are there any specific scents that you wish existed in perfume form? Like when I walk into a bubble tea shop, I always wish that was a perfume.
MK: “The crazy thing is, people have now made scents that never should’ve existed. Anything too edible freaks me out. I want delicious but not edible, and there’s a strange fine line. What hasn’t been captured? Hmm, what she said before about the sun baking something. There is something about the combination of salty, sandy, sunny….”
GH: “I wish you could put some type of temperature thing in fragrance so that when you inhale it, you feel the warmth. It’s just, there’s fragrance, and then there’s fragrance under heat.”
Allure: Almost like the pavement on a hot day when it rains.
MK: “Yes, that’s very specific — like I said, it’s the humidity. Here in New York, it can be horrific, but it can be spectacular.”
Allure: When you spray the fragrance and close your eyes, what do you both see?
GH: “I see the trip. I see us on the trip shooting the campaign, and that’s obviously personal for me. I hope everyone who wears it gets to experience it in a place that they love.”
MK: “To me, I think it just takes you to a place where you actually don’t have any rules. I think we’re all so programmed every day. It’s like, wait a second, take me to a place where there’s no calendar, no rules, where I can do what I want when I want and make my own rules.”
GH: “I think that’s important for fragrance on a daily basis.”
MK: “Well, yes, because the simple fact is every day we’re living with rules. Fragrance is the one place where you get to really have fun. It’s limitless.”
Allure: Lastly, what is the one thing you’ve had confiscated at TSA that killed you to let it go?
GH: “Do you have one? I always only travel with carry-ons so I feel like I always have the right-sized stuff.”
MK: “Mine’s silly. It’s weird. We were in London, we were coming back to New York, it was Easter, and we were going to our place in Florida. The couple who takes care of the house for us, they kept emailing and asking what we wanted for Easter dinner, and I said, ‘Oh, maybe lamb.’ I looked at my husband and said, ‘They have the best mint sauce here at Fortnum & Mason, so we stopped and I bought three jars and I threw them in my carry-on. Then we get to TSA and the guy goes, ‘What is this?’ And I said, ‘Oh, it’s condiments,’ and he thought I said condoms. So he took out the sauce and I told him it goes on lamb and it’s very delicious. So he opens it and says I can’t bring it. I said everything I could, but he wouldn’t let me. He said sorry.”
Source: www.allure.com
