For all her self-assuredness, fiercely independent spirit, and liberation of the female form in fashion more comfortable than the styles of her day, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was a great lover of men. From Ernest Beaux, the perfumer Gabrielle entrusted with the creation of the iconic perfumes we know today, to friends and muses like Igor Stravinsky and Salvador Dali, and lovers that included Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich and Hugh Grosvenor, Duke of Westminster, certain men were key in the life of Gabrielle Chanel. On the arms of these men, and oftentimes in their beds, Gabrielle found love and success. For all her men many though, none captured Gabrielle’s heart, nor played a more important role in the story of CHANEL than Boy Capel.
“In Pau I met an Englishman”, Gabrielle confided in her friend Paul Morand of her meeting with Arthur “Boy” Capel in 1909. “We made each other’s acquaintance when we were out horse-trekking one day… The young man was handsome, very tanned and attractive. More than handsome, he was magnificent. I admired his nonchalance, and his green eyes. He rode bold and very powerful horses. I fell in love with him.” Yet at first, Gabrielle and Capel did not speak. “Not a word was exchanged between this Englishman and me,” until, upon hearing he was to leave Pau, Gabrielle asked him to tell her the time he was travelling to Paris. “The following day, I was at the station. I climbed onto the train.”
An intellectual, politician, tycoon and polo player with dubious aristocratic lineage, Arthur “Boy” Capel was not only the dark, handsome stranger with penchant for bespoke tweed that Gabrielle met on horseback in Pau, but also the one true love of her life, and the first man to recognise the remarkable talent of the then 26-year-old Gabrielle Chanel. Financing her first Parisian boutique – a loan reimbursed in full, a sign of her legendary independence – Boy encouraged Gabrielle to revolutionise women’s style, rendering it more accessible and comfortable, by borrowing what she deemed essential from men’s apparel, his apparel. In Boy’s wardrobe, Coco discovered the jersey of his underwear and swimming costumes, the tweed of his suits, the cap toe of his riding boots, the ease of wear of his shirts and trousers, and the diamond quilting of his polo saddles – elements Gabrielle made her own, which are today recognised as emblematic of CHANEL.
Despite the absence of any business contract, nor a marriage certificate, theirs was a nine-year romance built on mutual understanding: “I was my own master, and I depended on myself alone,” Gabrielle told Morand. “Boy Capel was well aware that he didn’t control me: ‘I thought I’d given you a plaything, I gave you freedom,’ he once said to me…”, a sentiment echoed in the CHANEL double C logo; Chanel and Capel; overlapping, but also in opposition of each other. Tragically though, on 22 December 1919, en route to spend Christmas with Gabrielle in the south of France, Boy Capel was killed in an automobile accident.
Boy’s death a blow from which she struggled to recover, Gabrielle purchased Bel Respiro, her countryside retreat on the outskirts of Paris in early 1920 before shuttering herself behind the villa’s mourning black drapes – away from Paris, her friends and CHANEL. Here in the villa Boy had purchased years earlier before reselling, Gabrielle sought solace in solitude while contemplating her own future in the absence of Boy. In these months spent at Bel Respiro, heartbroken as she was, those three letters – BOY – came to mark the memory of the love her life; reminisced until her own death some 52 years later, then immortalised by Karl Lagerfeld with the iconic Boy bag in 2011, and once more paid homage by the launch of Les Exclusifs de CHANEL BOY in 2016.
An Exclusifs tribute to the influence of Boy on Gabrielle – borrowing from menswear without ceding any of her self-defined femininity – CHANEL perfumer Oliver Polge crafted in BOY a fragrance that blurs the gender line to mark the impression a man leaves on a woman, olfactive and otherwise. Built upon a fougère accord – that most classically masculine structure in perfumery – Polge with BOY takes to the fougère’s overt clean-shaven masculine virility with a pair of fabric shears and sewing needle, tailoring it to more flattering result, as did Gabrielle with the clothes she wore from Boy’s wardrobe.
By way of an official notes list, Chanel offers us:
lavender, geranium, sandalwood, heliotrope, musk
My own experience wearing BOY expands upon that list:
lavender, grapefruit, geranium, rose, orange blossom, heliotrope, coumarin, vanilla, sandalwood, white musk, oakmoss
Expectedly, BOY opens with fougère mainstay lavender; the scent at once vibrant and aromatic, like the purple buds freshly rubbed in the palm of your hand, is traditional in the barbershop sense, but rendered livelier, more contemporary by the inclusion of grapefruit. Coumarin – the vanilla-sweet flavour compound extracted from tonka beans, and another fougère mainstay – here also has a presence, though only to herald the encroaching geranium before it sinks into the background, ready to reappear only in the base. The geranium that forms the heart of BOY, hand sourced by Polge in Pégomas near Grasse, is minty, citric and rose-nuanced in equal measure, though garlanded by rose and orange blossom to amplify its floralcy, here again we see Polge soften the brutish edge of yet another traditional fougère note. At this stage, BOY is warm like sun-kissed skin, comforting too, but with no less refinement than the classic men’s scents that inspired it.
Gradually, the lavender and geranium release their aromatic grasp on the composition towards the base, supplanted instead by the silken softness of sandalwood, milky heliotrope, that sweet crystalline courmarin, oakmoss and powdered vanilla, all bound by the light as air thread of white musk. Here in the drydown we see that the entire fougère structure does exists in BOY, but like the elements Gabrielle took inspiration from in Boy’s wardrobe, here CHANEL – this time at the hand of Polge, not Gabrielle – has given them new impetus and a feminine touch to craft something timelessly elegant.
A perfume of androgynous lavender, geranium and vanilla refinement, BOY is a handsomely romantic tribute to the man Gabrielle Chanel loved and the lasting impression he left on her, and CHANEL more broadly. Wearing like a gentle and comforting embrace between lovers – the transfer of his scent to her cashmere jumper, and hers to his jacket – BOY is the most romantic of the CHANEL perfumes.
Come Valentine’s Day, whether you are buying for him or her, BOY is the fragrance you should be gifting that special someone.
Year of Release: 2016
Perfumer: Olivier Polge
Alternatives: CHANEL Jersey, Guerlain Mon Guerlain, Caron Pour Un Homme de Caron
Available: CHANEL boutiques and www.chanel.com from $285, 75ml