Gracie Abrams has just made it through airport security when she hops onto our Zoom call. The singer is on her way to New York City for a friend’s wedding (perhaps you read about it in the news), where she’ll wear the very same red sequin gown from Chanel by Matthieu Blazy that she wore for her Vogue cover shoot. If you’re somebody who believes celebrities like to leave their fans subliminal messages in their outfits, then this should have been a sign. Today, Abrams is officially a Chanel beauty girl.
“My grandmother had a bottle of N°5 on her sink,” she says of her first memory of the French fashion house. “The first thing I would do when I went to her house was sit at her vanity and just pretend that I was her. I remember thinking that a Chanel fragrance was peak womanhood.”
If wearing Chanel N°5 was peak womanhood, then what could being the face of a new fragrance—an ambery-citrus-floral Coco Mademoiselle Crush Absolu—mean? “Confidence,” she says. “Fragrance can change the way you carry yourself in a split second.”
Perfumer Olivier Polge describes the fragrance creation process as “starting with a blank page,” and ending with something sensual and warm. There are notes of vanilla and amber, which is paired with a bright and energetic note of grapefruit lychee. It’s a newer addition to a beauty routine that Abrams describes as low-maintenance. “I fluff my brows, put blush on, add the fragrance, and hit the road,” she says. Her signature feature, though, is her ever-shrinking hair. “I’m not very tolerant of growout, so if the back of my neck starts to know for even a moment that there is hair, I’m like, ‘chop it.’” (She adds that anytime Blazy sees her with a new and shorter haircut, “he embraces it.”)
Chanel
Something Abrams is embracing this summer—with both the forthcoming album Daughter from Hell and other creative endeavors that she’s working on—is remaining open. That applies to both the small, like her newfound love of pastel drawings—“I’m drawing little portraits of friends whenever we’re together,” she says. “There’s something quick and kind of silly about it, but I also find it very therapeutic and peaceful. I love it because it’s not that deep.”—and her first acting role ever in Halina Reijn’s A24 period drama Please.
“I’m trying to remain open to whatever the experience looks like and feels like,” she says. “And not get in my own way or let fear dictate my openness. I am very curious about how that’s going to unfold. It feels so weird talking about it, having not shot it yet.” And then there’s her current outlet-du-jour, dancing. When I ask if she means taking classes, she’s quick to note that’s not what she’s talking about. “No, just like going to the club! In the past six months, going out and dancing has become a really central part of my life. It’s been such an exciting outlet, and I do think a lot of my love for that actually was sparked by this campaign, so I’m endlessly grateful for that side of it as well.” That’s all she can reveal of the campaign film (releasing later this summer) for now.
