Heidi Klum: Perfume ‘Is Like Great Underwear’

Jill Johnson/JPI

She’s worn some of the sexiest lingerie in the world as a Victoria’s Secret model, but Heidi Klum believes there’s something even more sensual to wear under your clothes: perfume.

“For me, it’s something to complete the look. It’s almost kind of like great underwear,” she said. “No one can really see it but it makes you feel sassier and sexier.”

Speaking to PEOPLE at an event for her new fragrance, Shine, in New York’s Times Square last week, Klum said her scent — her first international fragrance — is “complicated. I really tried to look for something that didn’t exist, which is hard,” she explained. “I think 23 or 26 perfumes come out every year, and it’s hard to come up with something you haven’t smelled before.”

To that end, “Shine is a little more modern, powdery, but spicy,” she shared. “It’s a great marriage of sweet and spicy.” Notes include pink peppercorn, sunflower, lily of the valley, pear, mandarin orange and vanilla.

So to keep herself smelling sweet and spicy all day, Klum spritzes her scent in her hair, on her clothes — “I just kind of spray it everywhere,” she admitted. “And then I spray everyone else, too.” Including strangers!

“When we were in the elevator with security today, I sprayed it on all the guys,” she revealed. “Some of them I’ve known for years, but there was another guy I didn’t know.” She didn’t cut him any slack, though. Making spraying noises, she joked, “I was like, ‘I don’t know you, but ch ch.’”

–Reporting by Catherine Kast

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