Chanel 31 Rue Cambon

Chanel calls 31 Rue Cambon a chypre - sans oakmoss - and for a while I couldn't really see it.  The fragrance is rich and gorgeous, for sure, and somewhat old school in character, but it lacks that earthy, vaguely animalic bitterness I associate with the chypre accord.  Many "modern chypres" lack that, leaving me to wonder what exactly a word is worth if, eventually, it can be used to mean practically anything.  I understand that oakmoss is now restricted, but many of the so called chypres on the market these days don't seem to capture the essence of what a chypre is meant to be, oakmoss or no.  31 Rue Cambon seemed much zingier to me than any chypre that came to mind, and while not exactly as far removed from the term as a fragrance like the strawberry-saturated Miss Dior Cherie, it seemed closer to something like Allure (oriental - floral) than, say, Cabochard or Knowing.

Until today.  Recently, a friend found a vintage bottle of Mitsouko in a local antique store.  The Baccarat bottle is the nicest I've ever seen - blockish and curvy in all the right places - and the juice (I believe it's eau de toilette concentration) is a lot deeper than the present formulation, but it dries down to essentially the same thing, and because I've been smelling it a lot lately, and happened to revisit 31 Rue Cambon in the meantime, I saw similarities I hadn't before.

For me, 31 Rue Cambon sits somewhere between the floral vanilla of Allure and the deep golden hues of Mitsouko.  It's a bright fragrance, so shimmering at first, and really for a while, that it was hard for me to classify in any useful way.  Where Mitsouko is somewhat like sunshine through a pane of amber glass, 31 Rue Cambon is like sunlight hitting the beige upholstery of a sublimely cosy couch.  It's well blended, and more than anything it simply smells like "Chanel" to me.  That's part of its draw for me - its ability to evoke a world and a sensibility you can see and feel but can't pin on any one thing in that universe.  I don't get specific florals, or woods, or the bergamot I'm sure must be there.  I get "Chanel" - and unfortunately I can't tell you exactly what that is.  Pyramids are useful where words fail, I guess, and I could tell you what is said to be in 31 Rue Cambon - pepper, floral notes, chypre accords, iris - but the fragrance is more about associations to me.

It's as if the brief for 31 Rue Cambon were simply "Elegance".  I love many Chanel fragrances - particularly Cuir de Russie, No. 19, No. 22, Coco, and Coromandel - but none, not even the house's most iconic scent, No. 5, really seems to conjure the spirit of the woman behind the house and all the legends and details that coalesce in her biographies in any comprehensive way.  It's fitting that 31 Rue Cambon is named after Coco Chanel's famous address, at which were constellated her apartment, her design studio, her workshops, and the line's haute couture salon and boutique.  All the other Chanel fragrances pinpoint for me one or two aspects of the Chanel persona and mythology, but 31 Rue Cambon seems to take in the whole legend, playing out on the skin like a greatest hits anthology.

Which isn't to say it lacks focus.  31 is in fact an incredible distillation of a pretty complicated series of impressions about Chanel, the house and the woman, apocryphal and otherwise, and it might be best to think of it like one of the iconic photos depicting Chanel sitting in one of the address's rooms, her stare and her surroundings inviting projections about luxury, beauty, and the past.  31 lasts reasonably well, though it drifts sooner than later into a soft, powdery, floral melange, and rides things out from there, fading like a memory.

The photo above was taken on the set of the film made by Karl Lagerfeld in Chanel's former apartment at 31 Rue Cambon, and feels to me like the fragrance, a reconstruction based on iconic motifs, shapes, colors and silhouettes.

A Letter to Chanel Regarding Cuir De Russie

Dear Chanel,

Remember a few weeks ago, when I was out in L.A., and I came to see you, and I smelled every last one of your Exclusifs fragrances because, as I believe I told you at the time, I’d been reading about them forever, and had developed a love affair with them in my head, and didn’t want to be deluded, to be romantically involved with blinders on? I wanted to be sure. Did these Exclusifs warrant such reverent devotion? I wasn’t interested in your quilted purses (though I admit they seemed perfectly lovely and were in fact swarmed around by others in the store to the point of psychosis) or your dresses or frocks or whatever you start to call them when they get to costing that much. I thought the room off to the side (men with little walkie talkies; glass cases which seemed to be protected by laser fields) was just plain quaint; all those diamonds--is that what they were? I didn’t like that room most of all because it placed too many walls between me and your perfumes. It felt like going to see your betrothed at her childhood home for the first time just so you could fondle the spatulas in her mother’s kitchen drawer. What did spatulas have to do with anything?

Remember how I stood there, smelling and re-smelling? Remember how I held the bottles in my hand one after the other? I couldn’t get over how heavy they were, how solid. Glass bricks. And those magnetized caps! I should have been warned, I suppose, by the relative ignorance of your staff when it came to these fragrances. They were so busy running around chasing after quilted bags and glittery doo dads that they hardly had time to stop and answer my questions. Did they in fact have Cuir de Russie in stock? Hmm, they would have to go look. And look they did. I suppose. I waited. And waited. And finally someone popped her head out of some secret Chanel door to inform me that no, they did not have Cuir de Russie and that yes, perhaps it did indicate a certain degree of popularity. They expected more to arrive at the beginning of the following week, they said, clucking regretfully. Remember how disappointed I looked? Recall the shaky apprehension on my face? I didn't beg you to take down my address but I was more than happy and a little relieved to give it to you.

Early the next week, I wanted to know: had Cuir de Russie come in? I was impatient. I know, you said you’d call me, but I’d smelled the tester and been sent away with a sample, and all week I’d been obsessed. Guerlain said something about creating perfumes which smelled like the backside of his mistress. To me, Cuir de Russie was the ass of that mistress after riding horseback all day. The excitement of L.A. was peripheral, circumstantial to the real purpose of my visit: to secure Cuir de Russie and bring it back to Memphis with me, where I might love it and kiss it and hug it all over and call it my very own, oh boy. I didn’t want to bother you, Chanel, so I had your affiliates at Saks call you on Rodeo. I must have this mistress' ass rubbed in leather, I kept telling myself. Imagine my shock when the saleswoman at Saks was kept on hold for ten minutes and counting. I pictured frantic women racing around your multi-level layout. “Beaded useless trinket needed at the front counter!” “Rich woman trying on shiny earrings in the try-on-costly-jewelry-in-secluded-privacy wing!” “Quilted purse hemorrhaging cash on aisle four!” I was embarrassed for your affiliate at Saks, treated as if she were the ugly stepchild. Please, nevermind, I said, I was only kidding. I didn’t mean it. It was merely an experiment. With this, I walked away.

I stopped once more at Rodeo before leaving town. Weren’t you the guy looking for some of that stinky stuff, the faces of the security guards seemed to say. Whereas your sales staff couldn’t for the life of themselves remember me. Not that this troubled them even slightly. Until this visit, I never dreamed that quilted purses generated so much activity. Now I know what a serious business such items are. These people are in control, I told myself. They have handbags to sell and they set about selling them as if they were solid gold. This is good, I told myself, because people who shell out thousands of dollars for simple leather purses should absolutely, no question, be made to feel they are buying some luxurious rarity from the country of Googelholler. You did not have Cuir de Russie but promised to call me when it arrived. You’d call me in Memphis, you declared, and though I was dubious (when, after all, would the trade in quilted purses slow enough to allow such a leisurely call to be placed?) I expressed my gratitude and bid you adieu.

A week later, I received said call. “Mr. Whatsyerface, we’re calling to let you know that Cuir de Russie has arrived. We have reserved a bottle for you.” Hearing this, I must have tinkled ever so slightly down my pant leg. And listen, Chanel, don’t think I didn’t get right on that. I know what happens to a lousy little bottle of perfume when the big boys start crowding it out on the shelves. It’s a hard-knock life for perfume in a cut-throat quilted handbag environment. I gave you my credit card number and immediately began the effort to contain my excitement. You would only deliver the package to my home address. You refused to send it to my office, which was fine because, though it inconvenienced me, requiring that I stay at home to sign for the perfume, it bolstered my sense that you took my fantasy seriously, with the intent of rewarding my expectations.

Several days later, my package arrived. Please listen carefully, Chanel, because this is where our love affair ends. I knew when I took the package into my own hands that there was a problem. It rattled rather than rustled, for one. And I could smell the smoky florals and birch tar through the cardboard, as if you’d shipped it to me by simply pouring the juice into the box. Cuir de Russie: the splash bottle! The luxuriant perfume equivalent of boxed wine. Hesitantly, I opened the package. Here’s what I found. You’d stuffed the perfume box into one of your shopping bags, as you would at the counter, then folded the bag over. You placed the bag in the shipping box, then folded over several sheets of tissue paper to take up the slack. Here’s what the bottle looked like. The box, for one, was scuffed and dented, and soaked in perfume. The cap was off. So was the dispenser and the metal bib used to secure it. The label on the bottle looked like runny mascara. I appreciate the sample your staff threw in—-how very sweet of you, Chanel—-but would have appreciated a full bottle of Cuir de Russie, wrapped thoughtfully, with some amount of intelligence or forethought applied. Everyone appreciates a bit of rough, but runny mascara and torn stockings...not from you, Chanel. If I wanted hot mess I'd go downtown and pick it up out of the gutter.

Has anyone at your house ever mailed a package of perishable or breakable goods? I have to think even the smallest of children have, and you honor child labor laws, I expect. Has anyone in her right mind ever placed a glass bottle in a box without proper padding expecting it to arrive as if by some protective magic intact? Quite frankly, Chanel, my grandmother, who never learned how to open an email, sent me cookies with more thought put into their packaging than you put into the shipping of this 205 dollar bottle of supposedly luxury perfume, which arrived looking like something out of the remnant bin. My grandmother would have been appalled and mortified to learn that a box of crumbs, however tasty, had landed on my doorstep. You, on the other hand, are busy with the next quilted bag.

What do I want, mon cherie? Oh, I don’t know. I’m not sure you can make it better. Of course I’ll call you, first thing this week, and try to work things out. The dissolution of a relationship is a sad, uncomfortable thing. Whatever happens, the honeymoon is over. I now know that the quilted handbags are your true focus. Your priorities are there. As far as you’re concerned, Jacques Polge makes pretty things to smell but he can go fuck himself. And the people who spend hard earned money on his fragrances can go fuck themselves too, or they can fuck him. Or they can simply fuck off. It’s neither here nor there to you.


Regretfully,
Brian

Overrated, Underrated

More than a few people have noted a passing resemblance between Chanel Allure Sensuelle and Tom Ford Black Orchid. Both follow a recent trend in feminine perfumery, mixing a floral up top with a grunge accord at the bottom, albeit to varying degrees of success. Both have a candied decadence to them. Both dropped the same year. However, Black Orchid gets all the love, while Sensuelle, which must carry the weight of Coco Chanel on its shoulders, is treated as the ugly step-child.

Let’s be clear: Allure Sensuelle is no Chanel No. 5—but neither is Black Orchid. And while Allure Sensuelle has mastermind Jacques Polge behind it, Black Orchid…doesn’t. Like the new and old versions of Rive Gauche, the two intersect, smelling more like each other at certain points during their respective developments, then less. Both arguably unisex, Black Orchid has the advantage of Tom Ford’s blurred lines behind it, whereas Chanel sells to the gender segregationist set, and therefore plays to half its potential audience.

Despite the bluster of its campaign, signaled by the phallic, rectangular bottle (a bit like Mildred Pierce in her square-shouldered furs) Black Orchid never quite pulls it off. From the moment you spray it on, you can see it has big plans. It screams get out of the way in a coarse baritone vibrato. For the first five or ten minutes it's running off at the mouth, boasting so assertively that you trust it has something to say. It does and it doesn’t. The construction of Black Orchid is comparable to one of those old Rube Goldberg contraptions. In order for the little silver ball to end up in the bucket, everything must be perfectly conceived and constructed. The metal rails must be pitched the right way, lest the ball lose momentum before it hits its mark. The wooden lever that ball is meant to drop on, which will then hit the stick which holds the rubber fist, which will then slam against the button which releases the trap door, and the ball, so it can roll along its merry way, must be flexible enough. You look at a Rube Goldberg construction and it seems fine, everything looks great, until you try it out, at which point it either operates beautifully or things fall apart. Black Orchid is pitched a little too sharply. Certain chutes and ladders have been angled ever so slightly the wrong way, but you don’t know it until you’re rolling along all those rails. The proportions are wrong. You can see the image you’re meant to watch, under sheets of zigzagging static, or you think you can—but whoever tried to fix the picture slammed the side of the TV, rather than taking the time to adjust the knobs.

The heart of the fragrance lingers in gorgeous, twilit territory, where the flowers are nicely complicated, as if turning the lights down low made it as hard to smell as see, and a vivid, earthen woodiness reminds you the ground is underfoot. There’s even a tangy zest somewhere in there—turning the aromatic pungency of a fougere on its head. Wild Orchid lingers, pretending to relax, but only briefly, and the bluster of the opening notes resumes. This is a busy fragrance—places to go, people to see—off it rushes again. That would be fine, were it rushing somewhere half as interesting as the place it’s evacuating. The next thing you know, it’s stuffing its face with food, so furiously that you’d be hard pressed to say what’s on the menu.

Black Orchid’s intentions are fairly clear, and that’s probably a large part of its problem. From the ads and the hype you know what it’s meant to be: a bold, starkly etched fragrance reminiscent of those the great houses once released with the fanfare of the first walk on the moon. And it is reminiscent—like Jessica Rabbit is reminiscent of Rita Hayworth. In order to understand Black Orchid you must hold it up to the classics, and of course it comes off like a caricature. A shame, really, as it isn’t bad—or even mediocre.

The heart of Allure Sensuelle never quite achieves the magic of Black Orchid’s brief, hallucinatory moment of beauty. Arguably more linear, it is a consistent performer. It has some of Black Orchid’s tang but holds on to it until it figures out how to use it. It has the incense on bottom, along with patchouli and vanilla in place of truffle. It’s remarkably similar, but feels confident it has nothing to prove. Someone please tell this fragrance it’s a Chanel. Clearly it didn’t get that memo, which is where its own troubles began. Like Guerlain, the house of Chanel is on thin ice: will it mess with the perfection of its old reliables? Will it continue to produce the kind of quality women the world over have come to expect? Well, yes and no, in no certain order.
Had Allure Sensuelle been release by one of the niche lines this would be a moot issue. It’s a perfectly respectable, even lovely perfume. It draws from various currents of modern perfumery to show the others how it’s done. People expect innovation from Chanel—perhaps unfairly. So a mother lode of aldehydes were dumped into No. 5. So Cuir de Russie is the most exquisite embodiment of luxury between Planet Earth and Pluto. Why must every Chanel fragrance which doesn’t have the good fortune to be a miracle have to be considered a miserable step in the wrong direction?
Allure Sensuelle has its strengths. Its use of vetiver is accomplished and unusual for a feminine perfume, handled with considerable sensitivity to overall development. It has just the right amount of peppery dissonance, is burnished just so with the solar heat of frankincense. It lasts. It is aptly named, managing to achieve an interesting balance between salty and sweet, floral and oriental. It is arguably more androgynous than Black Orchid, and when a man smells it on a woman, he might just be taken aback by unexpected, unfamiliar urges and impulses.
If anything, Chanel must be faulted for its laziness in building a palpable sense of identity around Allure Sensuelle. A simple comparison between the genius of Ford’s creative direction (Black Orchid: vintage glamor, decadent impulses) and Chanel’s proposed fantasy (Allure Sensuelle: exactly…what…exactly when…exactly where and how?) makes clear Allure Sensuelle's true failure.
All the same, you could do much, much worse—in or outside of Chanel.