Jay-Z Smells Beautiful (He Says) at Diddy Perfume Party

Sean “Diddy” Combs probably wasn’t even aware that the air at the party for his perfume, Unforgivable Woman, smelled bad. The combination of the packed crowd and oddly rank steam machine on the fourth floor overpowered efforts by guests to have any scent of their own, unforgivable or otherwise — but Diddy was up above the clouds on the fifth floor, with Ashton Kutcher. Stuck waiting at the foot of the stairs for two hours, we asked passing celebrities what they imagined they themselves smelled like. “Oh, I smell incredibly beautiful,” Jay-Z told New York. “I smell like you just got out of the shower, you have on the towel and you just got your sheets on your bed and you’re laying and you wrap yourself up. I smell like that.” We tried to follow up with Beyoncé, but she only had the time to say that she was “hot,” which we had an easier time believing. “If a man falls in love with me, I would rather he fall in love with me than the perfume,” Eartha Kitt mused. “But if you need the perfume to help you, then that’s why I’m here. Because I want to see if Sean’s perfume is beautiful for somebody that I would like to have.” When we were finally allowed up to see His Diddyness, he deigned to answer a couple of simple questions. So what does Unforgivable smell like? “Confident, seductive, understated,” he told us. After two hours at the foot of the stairs, we begged to differ. —Amy Odell