No 4: To L'Interdit or to Gin Fizz?

My obsession with Grace Kelly & Audrey Hepburn has seen me go as far as trying to smell like them. Christmas 2009, I begged for and was given Givenchy's L'Interdit: the perfume made for Audrey Hepburn at the end of the 1950s. L'Interdit means 'forbidden'. Hepburn biographies and the like say the name comes from the fact that for the first year of its life, the perfume was only available to Audrey. Pretty exclusive, then (for a year, anyway).

The only thing that could make me as excited as smelling like Audrey Hepburn is smelling like Grace Kelly. I didn't think this was possible, though, since until the end of last year I thought her signature perfume was not sold in Australia. (I had big plans to stock up on the perfume on my next trip to Paris. But considering I haven't been to Paris for six years, I expected to have to do a bit of waiting.)

Vogue Australia happily proved me wrong in one of its final issues for 2010, when it announced that Lubin's Gin Fizz is now available in select David Jones stores in Australia. So Christmas 2010, I begged for and was given Grace Kelly's signature perfume.

On the left is Givenchy's L'Interdit. On the right is Lubin's Gin Fizz. And above you can see my mad photography skills. (Not really.)

Now that I have both Ms Hepburn's and Ms Kelly's signature scents, I am faced with a daily conundrum: do I want to smell like Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelly?

Of course, it depends, to a large extent, on my mood.

L'Interdit has quite a strong scent. Two sprays of that perfume and people in the next room will be able to smell you coming. Which is by no means a bad thing, it's just a thing. The perfume itself smells a bit musky and powdery (and by 'powdery', I mean in the Chanel No.5 sense, not the baby powder sense), and it has good staying power. If I want to feel elegant and loveable, and if I want people around me to be able to smell my perfume easily, L'Interdit tends to be a winner.

Gin Fizz and I are still getting to know each other, since we've only been together for almost three weeks now. Being named after a cocktail, I must admit the perfume easily made its way to my heart. A perfume that Grace Kelly loved and that is named after a cocktail?! That's a pretty darn good start. (I am yet to try a Gin Fizz, though. It should be a New Year's resolution. Although I'd have to drink the cocktail whilst wearing the perfume, otherwise it just would not feel right.)

As a perfume, Gin Fizz has a citrus-y and floral scent. It is more subtle than L'Interdit: the staying power of Gin Fizz is as good as L'Interdit's but put on two sprays, and it will only be smelt by those close to you. And I mean 'close to you' in a literal sense. People won't be able to smell you coming but if you hug someone or are sitting next to them, they'll be able to smell your cocktail of a perfume. Because of this subtlety, I feel more mysterious wearing Gin Fizz while the scent itself makes me feel feminine. It has more of a romantic feel to it so the next date I have, I will definitely be donning the Gin Fizz.

Out of the two perfumes, which I both like, I must admit I'm leaning more towards Gin Fizz overall as my preferred scent. I like the subtlety and femininity of it, and I feel it suits my skin better than L'Interdit. It's funny, isn't it, how the same perfume can smell so different when it's worn by different people. Ultimately, the perfume hunt is about finding the scent that suits your skin best.

And it is also about working the emotions a perfume creates to your advatage. I have a range of different perfumes that I wear for different purposes: one to make me feel like Audrey Hepburn, one to make me feel like Grace Kelly, one to make me feel confident, one to make me feel pretty and one to make me feel calm and happy. Perhaps it's just me but I find smell to be a pretty powerful thing, especially the smell of perfumes. It creates memories, brings back memories and evokes emotions.

While it's fun to smell like Audrey Hepburn & Grace Kelly, I think the only way to be truly Hepburn and Kelly-ish is to find what works for you and stick to that. Both Ms Hepburn and Ms Kelly found their own styles and had perfumes made just to suit them. While most of us probably won't end up having a perfume made in our honour, we can embrace our individuality and choose things that suit us rather than the masses.

And what could be more Kelly and Hepburn-ish than that?