Photo by Kate Molins

Today I’m Wearing : Portrait of A Lady by Frederic Malle

November 22, 2021

Who: Kristi Kimsey, singer songwriter, artist liason and co founder of Undercover Music. Kristi has lived her life immersed in music, starting as a singer songwriter in the 60s and 70s, then as right hand woman to her husband, legendary record producer and engineer Chris Kimsey, throughout the 80s and 90s. She stepped back from her own career to both assist Chris and be a full time mum to her two children, but now, after a lockdown discovery of what she thought were long lost cassette recordings, has released As I Look Back, her first album.

Kristi is a great example of why we should never give up on what we love in life, regardless of age or situation. As we are all expected to live longer, those goals we had in our youth are often still attainable so we should never give up on them. And when we get there we’ll have better stories to tell, although not many of us will have had a Rolling Stone introduce us to an 80s classic perfume.

Today I’m wearing Portrait of a Lady, it makes me feel like a woman and very grown up, which is unusual for me! It’s quite sensual and stimulating as well.

It smells richly musky and florally, with lots and lots of layers. I really enjoying wearing it for myself, because normally you get used to how your fragrance smells, but this surprises me, I’ll suddenly get a waft of another layer as it develops through the day.

Fragrance is very important to me, I grew up in Minnesota, by a beautiful lake surrounded by forest and woodland and we never came inside if we didn’t have to. So my earliest smell memories were really all about earthy, outdoorsy, quite clean smells and they’ve continued to be important to me.

I think growing up with such an outdoorsy childhood really has influenced the smells that I like.  When I was younger I was a bit of a tomboy, I loved the smell of Castile soap, that kind of simple, clean smell, it was the 60s, so we were all about organic, hippy lifestyles.

As I’ve grown up I’ve enjoyed more sophisticated smells. What really made me start to appreciate the art of fragrance itself was when I was working in Paris and began to understand about fashion and designers. When I met my husband Chris, who is a record producer and engineer, he was recording Some Girls in Paris with the Rolling Stones, and it was lovely Charlie Watts, who always smelled gorgeous, who introduced me to…