Tate McRae on Scent, Songwriting, and Defining Her Next Era

Tate McRae has spent the bulk of her career being two people at once. Tate and Tatiana—one born, one built. The one who admits she “hates public speaking so much” while accepting an award: Tate. The one who submerges herself in gallons of liquid gold before 100,000 shrieking fans: Tatiana. The one who writes, “At 22, it’s a little sad … but it’s fun”: Tate—then Tatiana.

It is Tatiana I meet when I pass through the industrial doors of an airy, white-boxed New York studio: eyes drilled into the camera lens, buttery blonde hair tumbling down her shoulders, all limbs in a Miu Miu minidress and towering Louboutin leather pumps. Glossy lips part as her dancer arms wind up the wall like tendrils of ivy. Hairstylist Evanie Frausto orbits the scene, smoothing down flyaways with a boar-bristle brush and zhuzhing her crown just so.

This kind of shape-shifting has a precedent. Beyoncé has Sasha Fierce, David Bowie had Ziggy Stardust, but for McRae, the split isn’t always so clean. Tatiana, she’s said, has become a dominant presence in her life, someone she taps into regularly, sometimes daily, both on and off the stage. Like any freshly turned 23-year-old, she’s still figuring it all out (just under a scrutinizing public spotlight—no pressure), and writing music has always been how she untangles who she is. Her brand-new fragrance, Tate 01 Eau de Parfum, is officially here to fill in the blanks.

“I’m always wearing perfume—before bed, before shows, and before writing sessions. I do think it affects how you approach the song. It’s the same thing as what [clothes] you’re wearing. It affects how you walk into a room, how you feel,” the star shares over Zoom exactly 24 hours earlier. She’s pure Tate then, clad in a gray sweater and baseball cap in her NYC apartment, sipping on a can of Coke. “Creating my own perfume, I wanted to encapsulate the sensual, fresh tones I’ve been wanting to walk into this next year with,” she adds. “I feel like it highlights a different part of my creative expression.”

Music and perfume are two sides of the same creative coin. Both demand some deep introspection; both are born in solitude yet unfold in the hands of millions. “You’re in a constant search of ‘Who am I?’ in these creative outlets,” McRae tells me. “You can write songs with other people in mind. You can reference other people or old music, but at the end of the day, you’re writing to see what sounds the most like yourself. You’re describing yourself—why you’re interesting, why your perspective is different from any other artist. That was similar to [creating fragrance], where I was like, ‘This might be something I enjoy smelling, but this doesn’t feel like me,’ or ‘Maybe this was me last year but doesn’t feel like me anymore.'”

Who is McRae, here and now, in bottle form? Initially, she assumed she’d wind up with some sort of vanilla situation. “I started with smells that I thought I was going to gravitate toward,” she says of working with Givaudan master perfumers Adriana Medina and Antoine Maisondieu. However, she ultimately found herself in a floral-woody cloud of bergamot, clary sage, orange flower, moss, and tonka bean. “As a 23-year-old who wants something for every single day—going to a workout class, going onstage, going to bed—I wanted [to create] something that I’m addicted to. I don’t get sick of this scent ever,” she explains.

Before you roll your eyes at yet another celebrity-founded brand in an oversaturated beauty market, know this: McRae has been itching to check this box since her dance-competition days, and her approach is pop-star nostalgia at its finest. She’s very much aware of the Y2K-era comparisons (namely Britney Spears, an association she once called “flattering and scary”) that cause millennial hearts to soar every time she pays homage with a red carpet look or crushes a highly technical dance break. And what did every icon worth their salt secure in the early aughts? Right—their own perfume.

“Creating a fragrance is the pinnacle of being a pop singer in my head,” McRae says with a grin. Sure, she landed a Grammy nomination, headlined Lollapalooza, performed twice on Saturday Night Live, and scored her first invite to the Met Gala, but the thought of crooning a breathy “Tate by Tate McRae” in a fragrance campaign? Peak stardom. “I remember looking at my idols being like, ‘Well, of course.’ I’ve always dreamed of this day,” she continues, “so it’s been fun gathering my favorite references, which are a lot of ’90s supermodels and timeless bottles, and comparing that to my current brand.” When I ask her to name her favorite pop-girl scent, it’s no surprise to hear that Ariana Grande’s Cloud ranks number one on the list. Despite all the Spears comparisons, McRae has mentioned Grande’s catalog had the greatest impact on her growing up. Indeed, when the star’s “Hate That I Made You Love Me” floats through the speakers during our shoot, McRae and I both can’t help but sing along. We trade a glance—a tug of her lips, a nod to the beat—then she locks back in.

That ’90s, early 2000s influence shines through in the juice itself: Heady and luminous at first spritz, Tate 01 is the kind of perfume I half expect to come with a wash of body shimmer. My secret lab sample, slipped to me like a love note on set, is even labeled “Bombshell,” a code name to prevent leaks and a tribute to its sultry Y2K influences. Despite its unmistakable glamour, however, there’s a softness to it—an intimacy by way of hedione, which evokes a fresh breeze through a carpet of petals, and Iso E Super, a synthetic molecule that reacts with your natural skin chemistry to create a personalized dry-down. Up against creamy, honeyed notes of orange flower, moss, and tonka bean, it produces an emotional contrast similar to that of a Tate McRae track list.

McRae, you see, has perfected the art of the sad banger, or raw, vulnerable lyrics set to syrupy vocals and high-energy dance beats that may very well have you crying in the club. Example: “She’s All I Wanna Be,” in which she belts “She’s got everything that I don’t have. How could I ever compete with that?” to a fast, pop-punk rhythm. It only makes sense that her debut fragrance would reflect some sort of duality. “I wouldn’t describe myself as super girly or super tomboy. I feel like I sit right in the middle. As a dancer, there’s this feminine and sensual vibe, but then I’m also relaxed and sporty. … That was the contrast I was looking for,” she says. In other words, the perfume isn’t Tate or Tatiana. “It’s a mix of both,” she adds. “The person who I created this perfume for is the girl that I would want to walk into a room and smell like and the girl that I would show up onstage as. That girl is right in the middle of Tate and Tatiana.”

That girl, it turns out, is also the subject of her fourth album. “I’m thick in the world-building of it all,” she says when I press her for any updates, eyes drifting to a far-off place she’s keeping firmly under lock, but she reveals that the fragrance was a missing piece of the puzzle. “I now know what the girl smells like, that presence when she walks into a room, which is so interesting to think about. When you’re writing an album, you start to think, How does she dress? What does she smell like? What does she feel like? What’s her aura What’s her energy? It’s been fun to add a little element that I usually never think about into my songs.”

The Tate 01 campaign—captured in Saint Bart’s by legendary model-turned-photographer Mario Sorrenti—has been integral in shaping this new character. “A big reference of mine is ’90s supermodels: Gisele [Bündchen], Kate Moss, Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer. I always look at them as timeless and feminine, and that really came to life when we shot this campaign,” McRae notes. Sorrenti, might I flag, shot Moss for Calvin Klein’s Obsession fragrance back in the ’90s, which would skyrocket both of their careers and define a new era of gritty, unpolished fashion photography. For McRae to collaborate with him on her perfume launch, especially as the new face of Calvin Klein denim, feels like cosmic alignment. Anyone would return feeling inspired. “Getting this aesthetic and painting this world has honestly been a catalyst for how I feel walking into my [songwriting] sessions and the mood-boarding process,” she adds.

As our own shoot wraps in New York, McRae guides me to the hair-and-makeup chair so I can quickly clarify one of my interview questions. “Oh god, what did I say,” she jokes—a flash of Tate through the Tatiana glam, sheepish and a little unsure. We chat for a couple more minutes before it’s time for her next press appointment, and I’m ushered out the door. Over my shoulder, I catch a final glimpse of McRae: gaze trained on her reflection in the vanity mirror, perfectly still as her team flits around her to ready the room for whoever comes next. It’s the kind of snapshot I imagine she’d tack onto her growing mood board. The girl in between, I’d call it. It’s a split second. But worlds have been built in less.

Shop Tate 01 Eau de Parfum

Photographer: Emily Soto
Stylist: Lucy Gatson
Editor in Chief: Kat Collings
Creative Direction: Natalia Sztyk
Hair Stylist: Evanie Frausto
Makeup Artist: Kali Kennedy
Entertainment Director: Jessica Baker