Whispers of any new CHANEL fragrance are cause for excitement to me. Even if they don’t win me over in the end, I can rely on CHANEL’s inherent house style and fastidious commitment to quality to produce a fragrance that is, at the very least, pleasant. When I heard word of a new Les Exclusif in mid-2018, six months before its release date, my excitement could best be descried as feverish. Then, closer to the release as a notes list found its way into my eager hands, excitement turned to trepidation with mention of eight different white musks.
I often find myself exhausted by certain perfume notes, usually because they reach saturation point in the designer market and become impossible to escape, in which case the mere hint of them becomes enough to turn my nose up. Cardamom, patchouli, occasionally tonka, ISO E Super, ambroxan and certainly white musk top my list of unbearable notes. A synthetic alternative to the animalic musks which have been regulated out of existence in mass-market perfumery, white musk imparts a laundry fresh scent to any composition it finds its way into, which seems to be most modern perfumer releases and every single laundry detergent on supermarket shelves. Their trademark fluffy clean scent is everywhere; I had come to expect the presence of white musk and grown bored of its proliferation. So, a supposed layering of eight different types of white musk had me prepared to loathe CHANEL’s 1957 when I got my hands on a 75ml bottle ahead of its Australian launch, the 75ml size rather than my typical 200ml Les Exclusifs bottle because I knew I wouldn’t like it. Then I smelled it and I didn’t hate it; I wasn’t even ambivalent toward it – I enjoyed it!
A white musk composition I enjoyed – what sorcery was this, I wondered. As it turns out, when CHANEL perfumer Olivier Polge took his hand to the note of my tedium, he seemingly found a solution to my boredom in its layering, making squeaky clean white musks but a thread in a broader tapestry of far more interesting indolic and animalic notes.
By way of an official notes list, CHANEL offers us:
white musk accord, bergamot, iris, neroli, cedar, honey, powdery notes
My own experience wearing 1957 expands upon that list:
aldehydes, pink pepper, white musk, neroli, orange blossom, coriander seed, honey, cedar, orris
1957 opens with an impression of popping soap bubbles. The effect, the result of a spritely interplay between aldehydes and pink pepper with a fair dose of white musk, is bright, clean and comforting. With the soap bubbles popped, the opening quickly surrenders the composition’s mainstays – white musk, orange blossom and honey. The honey note seems taken straight for Beige, another Les Exclusifs scent, with all the same waxy-resinous characteristics, while the orange blossom is dirty and raw which makes for a staggering contrast against the scrubbed-clean white musk. In the drydown, the gently piquancy of coriander seed paired with the inherent rough edge of cedarwood seem to contrast the silken smoothness of orris.
Deceptively simple, the key to 1957 and the genius of Polge’s composition is its contrasts; clean and indolic, light and dark, spiky and smooth. Without these, 1957 could have trod the path of simple nicety, just another floral musk in an already crowded marketplace, but no, CHANEL has crafted an elegant and impeccably polished scent with presence and poise. On the Les Exclusif popularity scale, 1957 sits firmly in the broader appeal category, alongside Beige, 1932 and Gardenia, though is arguably more unisex than its contemporaries. 1957 is what French elegance smells like in the era of white musks.
Year of Release: 2019 after very limited US release in 2018
Perfumer: Olivier Polge
Alternatives: CHANEL Beige, Hermès Hiris, Prada Infusion d’Iris
Available: CHANEL boutiques and www.chanel.com from $285, 75ml.