Eva Longoria on Wearing Perfume: ‘Latinas Grow Up With It’
Longoria, shining bright, like a diamond. (Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris, Getty Images)
Eva Longoria knows perfumes. Not only does the Telenovela star have a fragrance for every occasion (her choice “depends how I feel, where I’m going, who I’m with,” she said at the Elizabeth Taylor White Diamonds Night launch last night), but she’s also incredibly loyal to the perfume she says was her first: White Diamonds. The Elizabeth Arden fragrance is the celebrity perfume that launched a thousand scents — before every young starlet had her own fragrance, there was Elizabeth Taylor and her White Diamonds (named for her well documented love of giant, flawless stones).
Longoria’s been wearing the scent since she was young, she told a group of beauty editors last night, in her role as the co-host for the “Night” launch and 25th birthday celebration of the OG perfume. Her mother and sisters wore it, so she did too. Longoria filled us in on why Latinas are so loyal to brands and her biggest beauty missteps.
On her superscientific method of applying perfume:
“I spray it in the air and I run through it. I do! And then I put it in my hair, because I feel like it holds more in the hair.”
On why Latina women make up such a large percentage of fragrance purchases:
“Latinas grow up with it. We’re also very brand loyal. I know a lot of Latinas buy White Diamonds. We still drink Folgers coffee, we still buy Colgate. I remember I used Ivory until last year — Ivory soap. Which, I’m like, this is the most drying soap! And then I would be like, I gotta buy it, my mom makes me buy it! There’s something beautifully loyal about our community to brands.”
On her high school beauty look:
“Oh, girl. You should see my yearbook picture. I had a perm — that explains a lot. And I remember my perfume competed with my gel, because the gel had a scent. And so I was like, ah, I’m too fragrant! But yeah, it was like, this horrible red lipstick, and I’m from Texas so we had this big hair.”
On the fragrances her fiancé, José ‘Pepe’ Bastón, likes:
“He loves scents. He has a big array of cologne. He smelled White Diamonds last night, because he was in my room, and he was like, huh, this is interesting… He changes his all the time, so I’m never like, oh, this smells like Pepe. I don’t know who this smells like.”
On what she’d tell her younger self:
“Easy with the Aqua Net! No, my former self, I would say, don’t follow fads with hair. Everybody’s getting the perm, everyone’s doing the streak. Don’t follow fads — be yourself.”
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