THE EXPERT
CAROLINE HAINER, BEAUTY WRITER
“I have a beauty blog called Fifty Scents that I do with Rodeo, a fashion magazine here in Sweden. It’s mostly about perfumes and I try to write in the tone of a big sister. I’m one of the oldest writers on that site, it’s a young trendy group of bloggers. I’ve been around, I’ve seen it before, so I’m hardly very impressed. Someone recently called me the grand old lady of Rodeo (laughs). I also write for a number of other Swedish magazines and have a novel coming out on Valentine’s Day inspired by the time my therapist put me on a relationship ban.
I always wanted to be a journalist but I never applied to school for it because I assumed I never would get in, which is really weird. So I started out the hard way and at sixteen I called up a magazine here in Stockholm and asked if I could come and learn, which would never happen today and I basically worked my way up. I started writing about film and TV and then moved into beauty. I was nervous transitioning into beauty writing for a number of reasons the personal one is I was scared I wouldn’t be able to walk outside without makeup on and fear that someone would look at my skin and wonder why I was writing about this.
Not many people focus on perfumes and there’s not a lot of people who know how to write about them either. It is a personal experience and it’s esoteric but that doesn’t mean that you need to do what the PR people do or the marketing department. Perfumes are always pitched as ‘for the self secure urban woman’. It doesn’t tell you anything about the actual scent. I write about fragrance in a way that is an experience. I don’t have a particularly good nose but I have good associations.”
Caroline’s Top Three Scents:
“Guerlain, Jicky is such a nice old vintage smell. It’s elegant in a way that you don’t find a lot of perfumes are today.
Tom Ford, Violet Blonde is sensual, and I do see a blonde woman with dark red lips when I smell it. I’ve always wanted to be one of those women secretly but never was (laughs).
Balenciaga, Paris, which I am wearing today is my everyday go to. It’s so light and it has Violet in it. A lot of times I think of perfumes in terms of colors and I tend to like purple perfumes.”
For more pictures and to read Caroline’s full beauty routine click here.
Photos by: Aimee Blaut
Tags: Balenciaga, Caroline Hainer, Fifty Scents, Guerlain, Rodeo, Rodeo Magazine, Tom Ford
