Italian Lessons, Part Due

My new beauty icon is Gucci creative director Frida Giannini, who is so wildly glamorous it's unreal. I met her, unsurprisingly, at the launch of the new Gucci perfume ("met" here means another quick, Dolce-or-Gabbana-like handshake). She could easily star in her own campaign: not only is she very tall, she's my favorite kind of hot: all tousled hair and loads of black eyeliner, wearing a slinky-hot minidress to end all slinky-hot minidresses and the highest heels I've ever seen. (The photo here is from a different party, but you get the idea.)

Frida spoke in sexily almost-indecipherable English about her new fragrance, Flora, which is gorgeous (they gave us scented ribbons to tie around our wrists; I sniffed compulsively for two days) and launches this spring—at which time it will be described by me in detail. In the meantime, I keep the ribbon on my desk to occasionally sniff longingly.

—Cat Marnell, associate beauty editor

Photo by Venturelli/WireImage