~by guest writer AlbertCAN
Of all the people in the world I would have never guessed that I would be one of the first to write a full review about
Chanel No. 19 Poudré, one of
the two latest introductions from the fabled house. In fact even if the spirit of Coco Chanel told me this morning I would not have believed it, for all signs pointed to an uneventful day.
Yet life has a way of stringing the impossible, isn’t it? I had to take a photo with my personal belongings otherwise nobody, including myself, would have thought of it.
August 4th was my day off, the unorthodox result of my manager’s scheduling so I could work Monday to Saturday. This Thursday was meant to be routine—errands in the morning, fitness workout in the afternoon, early retirement by night in preparation of the early shift tomorrow.
Except I found out in the evening that I had to cast my ballot an important provincial tax referendum by tonight else I would have missed the opportunity altogether, with the nearest voting station at a local mall about 15 minute drive from my house. Nothing chic has been discovered in that toy plaza since the arrival of
Givenchy Amarige d’Amour, as I uttered to myself when I pulled out of my driveway.
The voting station was everything I loath, being a stone throw away from Walmart and the Hello Kitty concession stand, right next to the mall’s washroom. By the time I drop off my vote, after being asked to triple seal my ballot with three distinct envelopes I was just ready to leave. But then I remembered that one of my fragrances was about to run out, and not wanting to waste too much of my time I marshalled myself to The Hudson’s Bay Company, our historic—albeit slightly paunchy and tired by now—national department store monument. Move along, I said to myself, just get on with it.
The fragrance section of the HBC on a Thursday evening was nothing to behold: Sales staff three people strong, all manning multiple stations and sounding a bit inexperienced when interacting with other clients. With my look of death they left me alone after 10 seconds.
That’s when I bumped into a big display stand of
Chanel No. 19 Poudré.
I did a double take and quickly scanned the store’s
Chanel inventory. Not a bottle of
No. 19 in sight, and only the display of the new edition available: 2 bottles of 100mL
Chanel No. 19 Poudré eau de parfum. The most seasoned Chanel reps, even account managers, couldn’t tell me weeks ago when their supplies of
Chanel No. 19 Poudré would come to the Vancouver flagship store. Now I was face to face with two bottles in the local mall, with associates not even knowing a thing about it. (“I think it’s a limited edition*,” the poor lady said as she carefully surveyed the shelves, “Two is all we have.” *
editor's note: Chanel No. 19 Poudré is inteded as a regular diffusion to the original line and not as a limited edition)
I quickly grabbed the tester and gave it a test run. Now, having read all the information from
Perfume Shrine (
here and
here) I knew what to expect: Beautiful orris absolute, soft and buttery sheer. Much more delicate than the original, and with the icy zing of galbanum now in tender check. I’ll take one, as I quickly pulled out my credit card. I walked out of the store a happy man. The story, however, had just begun.
While my initial impression of the scent stays true on the blotter--for up to three days I find-- on the skin is a slightly different story. About 10 minutes after the initial testing the orris absolute, so prominently featured in Chanel’s Les Exclusifs line (most notably
28 La Pausa and
No. 18) started to soft focus: the delicate floral initially pinning in the background started came to fore, and on my way home one thing was becoming very clear—the orris absolute gave way to
a suede musk, bolstered by a synthetic iris, which was what I got for the rest of the three hours. It’s still going softly but surely, actually.
Now I would be inclined to say that the musk element feels like a natural progression from
Chance Eau Tendre, but to be honest the woody-musk drydown is very much a thoughtful rendition of
the original No. 19 elements, most notably the pronounced woods within the
eau de toilette version without the
oakmoss presence. In fact that’s the ironic arch about the structure of the new fragrance: I had the eau de toilette of the original and the new one side by side on each arm and they are essentially the same breed. The biggest difference among the two would be the green and the floral facets—in
No. 19 Poudré the rose and
jasmine absolutes are decidedly not present, and neither was galbanum taking a cut in the new version. What makes the original so interesting (and so difficult to sink into at first try) is that hit-your-face-like-ice-blade freshness only the finest galbanum from Iran could do (anything less would conjure a hint of garlic from the inferior grade). The new version, in short, feels almost like a summery of the old in a more updated language, albeit a bit hollowed out in the centre to usher in an iris-musk sillage.
Thus am I disappointed? Far from it: I know this is going to surely reach a
new generation and an entirely novel set of audience, most notably the American and the Asian audiances. In fact the entire artistic creation is right on the money, from the bottle to the juice. Even the image, albeit a bit on the forgettable side, is well integrated into the target image.
The original
No. 19, to begin, is truly one of the priciest formula in the original Chanel archive, with the finished compound costing around 1800 Euros (the exactly figure from
Chandler Burr’s
A Perfect Scent eludes me at the moment). Yet it continues to be a tough sell in the States with its cashmere opening and independent development. When looking at the formula, most notably the original eau de toilette, one notices the genius of Henri Robert by pairing the warmth with the cold, the sunny cis-3-hexanol salicylate and
hedione with the severity of
iris, the crisp
neroli with the sensual woody
chypre. Carefully beaded verdant crystals on top of premium silver penne velvet, breath-taking but not for everyone. So if the new edition could help breaking people into the masterpiece, well, why not? Yes and no.
I don’t question the Chanel perfumers’ desire to stay true to the spirit of Coco Chanel, and I don’t question the quality of iris at the beginning of the fragrance (I have several commercial orris blends in stock, and after smelling them along side the latest Chanel it was pretty obvious that some synthetics, most notably the tea-like alpha-isomethyl ionone, is paired with the orris absolute). Yet I wish the sillage could be a bit more varied and nuanced, a bit more imagination on top of modernizing the tradition: Wouldn't it breath-taking to dazzle us, Monsieur Jacques Polge, by pairing galbanum with a beautiful green element not available at Coco Chanel's time, such as the Michelia alba leaves extract? (Come to think of it: Why not? Wouldn't the high priestess of innovation appove when it's brilliantly done? ) And the white floral facet: well, pretty—I can feel the lily of the valley hovering in the background with the use of hydroxycitronnellal—but all this makes me yearn for the original so much more. So we have anther version of
No. 19 that’s not for everyone, this time in a different context.
On the other hand the new No. 19 is quite versatile, not only accommodating for different events but also as a layering base for the original parfum in order to amplify the iris in an interesting way. And as I have alluded to earlier in this article, the verdant fragrance can potentially be used as a masculine for some dandies. In fact I look forward to pairing this with a few drops of my 15mL parfum (which works surprisingly well as a masculine, by the way). By the same token, on the other hand, best to test the fragrance before purchasing a full bottle, as unlike the traditional
No. 19 line what's on the blotter may or may not be what you get on your skin, as the case to me.
Chanel No. 19 Poudré is a green floral and was developed by Chanel house
perfumer Jacques Polge: The notes of
Chanel No. 19 Poudré include neroli, galbanum, jasmine, iris, white musk, vetiver and tonka bean. I sampled the 100mL Eau de Parfum tester, both on paper and on skin. I purchased a bottle, although I haven’t opened it yet. It’s out in the market, although at the moment availability varies depending on geographical regions.
photo of bottle in box, copyright by AlbertCAN
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Cultural historian Tilar Mazzeo, after her best-selling The Widow Cliquot, has written a new book about Coco Chanel's legendary scent, The Secret of Chanel No. 5: The Intimate History of the World's Most Famous Perfume. In it, she skillfully interweaves facts about Chanel's life based on accredited biographers, such as Edmonde Charles Roux's biography Chanel and Her World, and musings recorded by memoir note-keeper perfumer Constantine Wériguine who kept a record of Ernest Beaux's souvenirs (Beaux being No.5' s illustrious perfumer). The inextricable struggle for survival of Coco, who went from orphanage in Aubazine to the cabaret and then on to the fashion atelier, aided by powerful men (Arthur "Boy" Capel, prince Dimitri and von Dincknlage among others) who loved her and aided her, and of her most famous creation, Chanel No.5 is fascinating to unravel.
If there is a "flaw" in The Secret of No.5 it is that the author intent on merging the designer with her famous masterpiece narrates the story as if every past deed in Coco's life bears a significance in the creation of the perfume by perfumer Ernest Beaux. It did not, as Beaux was certainly busy composing several first and second and upteenth drafts of his sperm idea years before he met Coco Chanel. But in retrospect everything falls into place and it is this which probably make the author choose this type of narrative style. The composition resonated with Chanel because it embodied everything she and her past stood for: a true classic yet perenially modern; the smell of "Boy" Capel who stood for cleanliness and safety, of fresh laundry & scrubbed skin reminiscent of the Cistercian orpahanage in Aubazine and the fervor of the demi-mondaines, young cabaret performers & societal fringe-living, less-respected women who wore heavy, sweet jasmine and musk scents; a bridge between the risqué and the lady-like, all in an emballage that spoke of Spartan deco restraint and mucho class. So much class and desirability in fact, that GIs were standing in line to get the goods back home during WWII and even Marilyn Monroe publicly proclaimed she loved it without being paid one dime to say she did.
But gardenia fragrances in particular re-entered the consciousness of the public with a vengeance in the next decade, the 1930s, in a different manner. This was a time of financial difficulties and a more conservative cultural milieu, when every company was launching or re-issuing their own gardenia fragrance; advertising them as a return to neo-romanticism, the gardenia boutonnières of Edwardian dandies and the gardens in the South of France which provided welcome escapism. 
Indeed an American advertisement for Chanel Gardénia mentions how it's meant to evoke romantic gardens at the Riviera and tags it as a youthful fragrance. [Chanel is no stranger to capitalizing on advertising to promote specific perceptions of their products, as it famously did with No.5.]
The vintage Chanel Gardénia was composed on a narcissus base with a green accent of styrallyl acetate; a freshly green note, naturally present in budding gardenias and a very popular inclusion in many classic floral chypres: It provides the gardenia greeness in the heart which compliments the mossiness of the background, from Miss Dior to Ma Griffe. The trick of composing a "gardenia chord" instead of using an extract from nature was necessitated by technical complications: No essence could be rendered (till very, very recently in fact and then only in some extremely limited distribution niche fragrances). The gardenia in the hands of Chanel is oscillating between green and creamy, as it's allied to other white florals with a powdery veil.
The vintage came in extrait de parfum (a very round and feminine smell) and later Eau de Toilette in the standard square bottles with the round black screw-on cap. Opening one, made me realise how different the perceptions of a floral were in those eras back contrasted with today: Although I can feel the delicate rendering of petals, there is no immediate "department-store atmosphere" of a hundred florals sprayed simultaneously into the air. Drop by drop, it's silky and polished, like a strand of patina rose pearls in slightly differing diameter.
The original version of Gardenia circulated well into the 1950s, but it disappeared at some point when other Chanel fragrances such as No.19 and Cristalle entered the scene. Sometimes the labels did not have the French accent aigu for the American market.
An effort was made to bring it back alongside the more faithfully rendered classics Cuir de Russie and Bois des Iles in the Chanel "Rue Cambon" exclusive boutique circuit at the cusp of the 1990s: Regrettably, it was the least resistant link in the chain, accounting for a rather destitute white floral. The bottle in extrait was rectangular with a white label like standard Chanel extraits (depicted) and the colour of the juice a light yellow. There was also a limited edition Eau de Toilette in a rectangular bottle edged in gold, with white label and white cap in the 1990s (shown on the right).
"Bleu is the opposite of Egoïste. Egoïste was inspired by a woman's fragrance* [Bois des Îles], whereas there is nothing feminine about Bleu. I wanted to do something very direct. You know, men's fragrances are still very linked with shaving. When I find myself in planes, at some point I always see those business men coming from the bathroom smelling of aftershave. So Bleu is spicy, woody, and dry. There is no fantasy.".jpg)
*Hence its original name, Bois Noir. Only offered in Chanel boutiques at the time, Bois Noir was in production for only a few months in 1987 before it was withdrawn from the market, later to be replaced with the more widely available Egoïste.
In the case of Chance Eau Tendre the effect feels like dumping down, instead of modernizing an idea for a young audience; unlike the excellent No.5 Eau Premiere which took a classic and flew it into the ethers of poetic but approachable Elysium. In short, Chance Eau Tendre is only technically a well-crafted formula (good tenacity, plenty of sillage, coherent notes in unison) but artistically it's a plea to the lowest common denominator. And that's surprising from someone as skillful as Jacques Polge who clearly knows better, so it cannot be anything but a deliberate marketing decision from above.
A propos: L.Turin had said it best talking about brands: "To borrow terms first applied by 19th century journalist Walter Bagehot to the monarchy, brands have both an "effective" and a "dignified" function. [...] The dignified function is image: the buyer advertises his purchase to others.[..] That label, not the white baby sealskin bag to which it is attached, then gradually comes to mean "money". In other words, it becomes a currency. Once you have a currency, you can do lots of fun things with it. You can debase it (real Vuitton bags); you can counterfeit it (fake Vuitton bags); but best of all you can play on the fact that all currencies work by mutual consent. In other words, if you can persuade the rich to use your debased coinage, then the poor who buy real fakes and fake fakes will not feel shafted or silly and the scam becomes self-sustaining. [...] This is what is called brand "mystique" and it works best when those who produce the lies believe in them. [..]You have to believe, and to communicate the belief, that there is something intrinsically different about an object that bears a particular name. This is not a new trick: the aristocracy has practiced it to great effect since the French Revolution. A titled name used to mean having, it now means being. Titles are, in marketing terms, the human limited edition. What this means in practice: you've just bought a frog, but the ads swear it's a prince".
