Lily-Rose Depp for Chanel No. 5 L'Eau.
Chanel No. 5 L’Eau ~ fragrance review
We should be happy. Chanel has been very careful with its legendary No. 5 and until now has only dared an Eau de Parfum and Eau Première beyond the original Eau de Toilette and Extrait. Both were careful enhancements. No No. 5 Noir or Eau de Sport or Resort Rose.
I can almost imagine Chanel executives casting sidewise glances at Guerlain. “What the heck are they doing with Shalimar?” they might ask. All those takes on the classic — Eau Legère, Light, Souffle de Parfum, Parfum Initial, Ode à la Vanille, and more — are akin to stealing Joan Crawford’s shoulder pads and eyebrows. At some point you end up not with an icon, but with a placid starlet who will please the common denominator for a few months, then be forgotten for good…
(More) new & upcoming perfume books for 2016
A few more new and upcoming perfume books for 2016: Chanel, The Art of Creating Fragrance: Flowers of the French Riviera by Lionel Paillès; Sacred Scents in Early Christianity and Islam by Mary Thurlkill; and The Secret Ways of Perfume by Cristina Caboni.
Also new: a paperback version of Jean-Claude Ellena’s The Alchemy of Scent (due in October) and an audiobook of Aphrodesia by John Oehler (available through Amazon or Audible).
The Art of Creating Fragrance: Flowers of the French Riviera
From Chanel comes The Art of Creating Fragrance: Flowers of the French Riviera (French title Dans les champs de Chanel, à Pégomas, en pays de Grasse), a six volume box set with text by Lionel Paillès and photographs by Pierre Even…
You know me
Lily-Rose Depp in two teasers (one is below the jump) for Chanel No. 5 L’Eau. More to come.
Boy Chanel ~ fragrance review & a quick Chanel poll
Boy Chanel joins the Les Exclusifs collection at Chanel this year, bringing the collection to 16.1 It’s the second Exclusif from house perfumer Olivier Polge (the first being Misia), and was inspired by Arthur “Boy” Capel. Boy Capel, an English polo player and businessman, would likely be forgotten today but for his 9-year affair with Coco Chanel — he is often cited as the true love of her life.1 That, of course, lends him massive potential as “another link in the grand construct of the Chanel story”.2 I don’t know exactly how many products he has accrued at this point, but his namesake lipstick (in the Rouge Coco Shine line) came out in 2011, and his namesake handbag, Le Boy Chanel, debuted in 2012 (and was called an “instant classic”). Now, he has a fragrance.
It’s a unisex, with the usual hedging about unisex…