Saturday, November 15, 2008

Since No One Has Done It: Im going to talk about Coco Chanel


So before I had a blog, I searched the internet far and wide for a review of Coco Chanel, unfortunatley this seems to be the neglected child of the Chanel family, the 'net overflowing with 100's of reviews of Bois des Iles or Cuir de Russie - but absolutely no mention of this masterpiece.

I'll start with the notes:

Top Notes
Angelica, Mimosa, Frangipani, Mandarin Aldehydes

Middle Notes
Cascarilla, Orange Flower, Bulgarian Rose, Jasmine

Base Notes
Labdanum, Ambrette Seed, Opopanax, Benzoin, Tonka, Vanilla, Patchouli

What a great fragrance, I remember this from when my memory essentially starts (in the 80's). It is therefore my compass of what is a perfume. Before becoming a perfume enthusiast I never really thought of the notes in terms of floral, ambery etc, but actually I decoded the perfume as the smell of mixed cosmetics. This is actually an association that has stayed with me, both aldehydes and orris have a strong "make-up" connotation in my mind. Anyways, now that my perfume IQ is more developped I can describe the perfume in terms of its actual notes, which are listed up top. For this review I will concentrate mostly on the rose note, which is the essence of this perfume. That being said, the floral bouquet here is mainly jasmine + rose, with touches of neroli, frangipanni and mimosa. The roses are very heavy on damascones and have almost the scent of fresh apples, but not the sweet apple topnote we are now use to in alot of fragrances, this is the semi sweet fresh scent of the apples' skin cut open. This semi-sweet floral note paired despite the oriental base means that this perfume never falls into sweet oriental territory, instead keeping a much drier profile all the way through to the drydown. This is accomplish by a very light application of vanilla, and more spotlight on the dry ambery facets or the oriental base. The only musk that I detect is an ambrettolide type, which makes this fragrance very light, despite its "baroque" character. Both sillage and longetivity are very long with this fragrance.

Another perfume which I own, in which I find a strong ressemblance to Coco Chanel is 1000 de Patou - what do you think ?

1 comment:

Vetivresse said...

The most sublime use of rose and orange flower. Bold and great. For some reason it makes me think of Claire Bloom in Woody Allen's Crime & Misdemeanors. It's not a chic scent -- it's more a wealthy 80s suburbanite channeling chicness.