Eiza González Fronts Louis Vuitton's 'On the Beach' Fragrance in Painted Body by Alex Israel
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Louis Vuitton debuts the fifth unisex fragrance in its Parfums de Cologne line, called ‘On the Beach’. The Jacques Cavallier Belletrud-crafted fragrance is positioned as a light, citrusy, sensory California getaway to warm sand and roaring waves. Images are by Thomas Whiteside; Courtesy of Louis Vuitton
Actor Eiza González is the face of the new fragrance, posing nude with her own skin covered with sunset-inspired body paint by multimedia artist Alex Israel [IG].
“It looks like I rolled on magical rainbow sand!” González, 31, told Vogue of the end results.
“It took eight full hours, almost nine actually, which is insane. And then it took almost four hours to get rid of it … You can imagine taking it off was like the ultimate scrub. My skin was, no joke, the softest it’s been in my entire life.”
Gonzalez appreciates her role as a Mexican actor and singer being featured amidst the clarion call for greater representation in the world of fashion, style and beauty.
“I grew up watching all these beauty campaigns in the ’90s and I wouldn’t see a lot of Mexican women in them, especially in these large-scale brands,” she explains of what it means to work with the iconic French fashion house. “It was always kind of sold to me that I had to be a specific style of woman to be it, and the fact that girls in Mexico who are brown and Latina like me will see a campaign like this and recognize themselves in it with the scale of the brand makes me so honored and happy. It’s normalizing an image for people and making people feel included and seen.”
The On the Beach fragrance features citron as the key scent, with notes of yuzu, neroli and aromatic herbs thyme, rosemary and pink pepper. The cent is rounded out with a touch of cypress to replicate the feeling of a tree’s shade.
Yuzu is a citrus fruit and plant originating in central China and widely cultivated in East Asia. It’s considered to be a hybrid of mandarin orange and the ichang papeda, the latter being a slow-growing, citrus shrub or small tree that produces a bitter, sour, acidic, unpalatable fruit of limited commercial value. in Japan the fruits are traditionally left floating on hot bath water to add fragrance to the air.
Neroli is an essential oil produced from the blossoms of the bitter orange tree, also the source of orange blossom essential oils. Neroli is extracted through distillation, with Orange Blssom [flower] Absolute extracted using solvents. Neroli is sharper and more ‘cologne’ like while, Orange Blossom Absolute is headier, heavier and more herbaceous in scent.
