From the TV set to Snapchat to the red carpet and beyond, Kat Graham is kind of killing it. Mere months after becoming the face of Wet ‘n’ Wild (alongside Jasmine V and Brianna Howey), The Vampire Diaries darling was named Caress‘s new fabulista, not only showing off her style but empowering others to live fiercely and fearlessly.
The star and social media maven introduced a group of editors to the newest additions to Caress’s ground-breaking Forever Collection , which features scent technology that allows you to refresh the fragrance through touch for up to 12 hours. Enchant Forever is a fabulous floral gourmand fragrance with notes of honeysuckle and satinwood while Mystique Forever offers more sensual fare with notes of Imperial Iris and rich amber. Graham admitted that she’s sniffed all of the scents, but does have a favorite. “Enchant Forever is my jam. I thought Mystique Forever would be it because I’m a big amber scent girl, but it turns out Enchant Forever is my fave,” she gushed. “I put a little on my wrist and just smell it sometimes, and I think, ‘Ok, I’m good. I can meet people. I don’t smell like how hard I work.'”
And Graham puts in work! Aside from her beauty duties and her work on The Vampire Diaries, she’s also working on her music and staying connected with her fans. “I always told my mom, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to be a famous actress, and I’m going to be a people’s artist,’” she explained. “[What it] meant to me, as a young girl, was I wanted to be not only someone who was connected to the fans, connected to people, connected to causes that were all about female empowerment; that I had a message; that if I was the face of anything, it was going to be a company that was accessible to me, that you could afford no matter what place you were in your life. I wanted to be an accessible artist.”
And like her artistic philosophy, she wants to encourage women to indulge their inner royal and treat themselves like queens. “This campaign is about channeling your inner queen and being fierce and being fearless and unapologetically powerful, and that looks different to us because as women, we have so many different ‘notes,'” she said, pun intended.
Smell is the most important sense for the actress, who uses fragrance, like fashion, as her armor for everyday life. “I’m somebody that likes darker, more mysterious scents, and I like things that reflect my personality,” she told the group. “I’m kind of a tough girl; I’m some poor kid from Hollywood that got a break, and I like to smell powerful. That translates to me with how I interact with people, in my work—smell to me is extremely important, and it does reflect who I am as a person.”
Graham noted that the scents in the collection, which were inspired by fine fragrances like Prada Candy and Viktor & Rolfe’s Flowerbomb, were meant to be mixed and matched with your favorite scents. “There are certain lighter fragrances that bring out different things in the Caress smell, so it’s really fun playing around with notes if you are a smell person. But if not, you can just go with Caress and move on since it smells good. Figure out what works for you and how the scent complements your natural scent. I’ve tried them all…it’s a problem,” she said.
Don’t worry, Kat. We have the same problem, but it’s not a crime to smell so fine!