As we have come to expect of CHANEL today, everything the brand does is tied to the memory of Mademoiselle Chanel. Before CHANEL though, before Coco, there was Gabrielle – the young woman who would later become Coco. With the 2017 release of the brand’s first feminine pillar fragrance since Chance in 2002, it came as no surprise then that it was named Gabrielle.
“I have chosen the person I have wanted to be and am,” Coco once proclaimed. Beneath the pearls, before she was the entirely self-made paragon of sartorial elegance, Coco was Gabrielle, an enigmatic, free-spirited and rebellious girl with a determined eye for her future. This is the woman CHANEL’s in-house master perfumer Olivier Polge set out to capture with Gabrielle Chanel Eau de Parfum. For all this talk of passion and rebellion though, I am not convinced Gabrielle delivers, but more on that later.
Monsieur Polge describes Gabrielle as smelling of “an imaginary flower — a radiant and sparkling, purely feminine CHANEL blossom based on a bouquet of four white flowers: a rich, enveloping heart of exotic Jasmine shimmers with the fruity green notes of Ylang-Ylang, while fresh and sparkling Orange Blossom shines through, offering a glimpse of Grasse Tuberose captured at its finest.” Quite accurately in my experience, the official notes list expands upon this to include:
mandarin, grapefruit, blackcurrant, Grasse tuberose, ylang-ylang, jasmine, orange blossom, sandalwood, musk
Straight from the bottle, Gabrielle is a citrus-forward floral almost so effervescent as to make it difficult to discern the opening’s exact notes. Behind its aldehydic like effervescence – which isn’t the result of actual aldehydes, rather the same dialling up of grapefruit, mandarin and neroli as in N°5 L’Eau – I do detect a pretty bouquet of orange blossom and jasmine, each scrubbed clean of any indoles and sweetened by the inclusion of blackcurrant. Past the opening, Gabrielle becomes almost chypre-like in a that parallels to Coco Mademoiselle could be drawn, settling eventually in the realm of white musk and sandalwood. The result is a bright and pretty white floral abstraction crafted to CHANEL’s impeccably high standard – a girlish fragrance though, one without the substance of past CHANEL releases.
Like many, I too was initially disappointing by the transparency of Gabrielle. I didn’t then and still don’t believe Gabrielle lives up to the promised free-spirited rebellion, suspicious instead that was a marketing ploy to lure a new millennial client to CHANEL Beauty boutiques. Eventually though, Gabrielle did win me over with its ease of wear that I now find myself regularly reaching for in the heat of summer when only something undemanding, but still of high quality will suffice.
Keen as I am about bottle design, Gabrielle’s played a small part in winning me over in the end. The bottle is gorgeous. Apparently CHANEL’s head of packaging and graphic design, Sylvie Legastelois, foresaw a new feminine pillar on the horizon as early as 2012 and started sketching designs – five years later that design became the delicately quilted five panel bottle of Gabrielle in thin, lightweight glass with its gold label set into the bottle’s central panel. Whether or not this anecdote is to be believed is another matter, the bottle though is gorgeous and a much more impressive than those of Chance and Allure.
Gabrielle is charming. Eager to please even, like the girl from the orphanage at Aubazine who was not yet Coco. Approach it without expectation and you might just fall for her charms.
Year of Release: 2017
Perfumer: Olivier Polge
Alternatives: Elie Saab Le Parfum, CHANEL Coco Mademoiselle, CHANEL Paris-Deauville
Available: CHANEL Beaute boutiques, MYER and David Jones from $134, 35ml