Kristin Cavallari on Her Debut Fragrance, Breaking Industry Standards, and What Inspires Her

Let’s set the scene…the desert heat is beating down, there’s sand between your toes, all you can see for miles is cacti, and Kristin Cavallari is telling you about her debut fragrance — Hard Feelings. What else is there to do other than sit down with her and listen to everything she has to say? That’s exactly what we did. 

While in Cabo shooting the campaign for Hard Feelings, we caught up with Kristin to get more details on the scent, how the fragrance creation process was for her, and why Hard Feelings stands out from every other fragrance on the market. Guess not everything that happens in Cabo stays in Cabo. 

 

What made you want to create a fragrance? 

I wanted to create a fragrance because I feel like it's the last thing you put on to just go and take on your day. It can give you that little boost of confidence and just make you feel sexy.

Why do you feel so connected to this scent?

I feel really connected to this scent because I'm so particular about what I wear on my body and really spent a lot of time creating a perfume that I absolutely love and wanted to wear every day. This has a nice balance between masculine and feminine, which is kind of everything that I am drawn to in my life.

Was it important to you that Hard Feelings followed specific ingredient guidelines?

I wanted to follow the same guidelines that we follow at Uncommon Beauty for Hard Feelings. So we are vegan, cruelty free, gluten free, paraben free, petrolatum free, phthalate free, titanium dioxide free, colorants free, Leaping Bunny Certified, and EWG Verified.

What was the inspiration behind the scent? 

The inspiration was definitely sexy, moody, and complex. We focused on the duality of soft femininity and strong masculinity. There's a nice balance of floral scent notes with woodsy scent notes — I just want you to be able to wear this day to night. I want this to work for everybody and be like nothing you've ever smelled before.

What was the inspiration behind the name Hard Feelings?

The inspiration for the name Hard Feelings really is similar to the perfume itself in that I just wanted something that had that balance between soft and strong.

What makes this fragrance stand out from others?

We decided to put the full ingredient list on our packaging and our website. Most fragrances only give you a condensed version of their ingredients, so we wanted to lay it all out there and give you guys the full list. We're also gonna have details of each ingredient on our website. 

Uncommon Beauty is fully fragrance free, so what made you want to create this fragrance?

One of the things that we really focused on when creating Hard Feelings was to align with our mission at Uncommon Beauty, which is to be guilt-free and have full transparency. That means that it at least needed to be vegan, cruelty free, and gluten free.

We also worked really closely with our perfumer and our manufacturer on where our ingredients are sourced from and how they're sustainably sourced. We wanted to use as many scents that are extracted from plants as possible.

Can you tell us about the creation process and what it was like making your own fragrance?

Creating Hard Feelings was such a fun [two-year] process. It all started with a vision board, then my team and I flew to New York and we met with a certified perfumer and manufacturer to smell over 40 ingredients that aligned with my vision board. This is where we discovered, which was surprising to me, that I'm actually really drawn to woodsy scents and I still wanted to balance that with the florals.

After that, the perfumer and the manufacturer put together ingredients that I really liked to create a bunch of different perfumes. Then we had our second smelling session — so we went back to New York and smelled everything on testers, we wore them, and we just really sat with the perfumes for a while to see what we were drawn to. Then I wore the perfumes to see if I liked them on the skin and this is where we narrowed it down to two different formulas.

After that I received one more round of samples and then I finally narrowed it down to Hard Feelings. I started wearing it every day. The team also started wearing it every day and when we all started getting compliments on it, that's when we knew this was the one.

EWG Verified • 100% Ingredient Transparency • Safe, Sustainable Ingredients