Harielle

Many years ago, shortly after the Christmas holidays, I stood in a duty free shop at Frankfurt Airport. The journey was to go to London over New Year's Eve, my partner at that time had given us an extremely restless night because of fear of flying. Full of joyful tension because of the upcoming days in the UK's capital but also dead tired and therefore in an imbalance between adrenaline and tiredness, I escaped the trembling something next to me and walked into the shop. My favourite scent at that time and the only one I wore was Chanel No5. Overwhelmed by the many brands and scents on offer, I headed for the Chanel shelf. After all, I had always wanted to see what else of Mademoiselle Chanel's own brand was available besides the magic five. Black, angular with a white-golden logo, Coco beamed at me from the shelf and I remembered - yes, there was this spot with Vanessa Paradis in a birdcage! So put it on your hand and uih, an absolutely different chapter than "le cinq".

I imagined that I saw a Coco bottle in the film "The Stepford Wives" on the washbasin shelf of the main character Joanna Eberhart, played by "my" adored Katharine Ross. For this reason alone, resistance was futile, Coco had to come along. Only later I noticed my mistake, the film adaptation by Brian Forbes was made in 1975, but Coco was not released until 1984. So definitely beyond Stepford, Coco is a child of Orwell's year and offers a floriental bouquet, which in contrast to Orwell's 1984 doesn't cause nightmares and anxiety.


The prelude is floral and fruity against a balsamic and resinous, even oriental, background. The lightness of orange blossom, peach and tropical frangpani is determined by the added aldehydes, which play such a decisive role in the well-known sister fragrance No 5. They remind me of black or cream lace, pale but transparent. Jasmine and Rose join them softly and gracefully, and remain whispering in the background. Spices - including cloves - and bold resins emerge slightly leathery and combine powdery with tonka bean and the patchouli and sandalwood purring in the base. Black, velvety and cuddly like a cat, Coco creeps gently around her wearer again and again. Even cats are not always "understandable", are very headstrong, very sublime and known to be loners. Coco possesses the same qualities, she doesn't "tell" her story at the first go, but only hesitantly gives away her secret piece by piece.

Coco is not often smelled in everyday life, it is not a "crowdpleaser" that hip young women spray each other in perfumeries and cheer with joy. I have always smelled this scent, if at all, on very special women, across all age groups. Coco wearers seem to have silently entered into a contract with their fragrance, based on not using too many words to make the obvious, namely that a powdery, floral oriental of exquisite quality is far above fashion trends.

Chanel Coco is often seen as Chanel's "answer" to the huge success of Yves Saint Laurent's scandalous scent Opium, which triggered a wave of intense oriental scents. However, Coco does not do justice to the fact that it was only a "fashion fragrance" and a latecomer, which was the case with Estee Lauder's far less well-known Cinabar. Somewhere I once read that when opium evokes associations with Marrakech, Coco clearly leads to Venice. A comparison I can only agree with. Whereby for me it is not and the hopelessly overflowing Venice that most of us know, but that of the mysterious masks and heavy velvet capes as well as the nightly balls in magnificent palazzi.

Coco was the first fragrance to be launched after the death of Coco Chanel under the direction of the then young Karl Lagerfeld and is now considered a classic. The Chanel homepage says that Coco reflects Gabrielle Chanel's preference "for the baroque" and unites opposites, as Mademoiselle Chanel herself showed them. On the one hand, Chanel influenced a very puristic fashion style, and let her inclination for baroque aesthetics flow into the design of her jewellery and accessories as well as the furnishing of her apartment.

In the early 2000s, I left the No 5 behind and became the definitive coco-convert - and still am today.

There are perfumes that you simply know without ever having tried them. One of them is for me Anais Anais of Cacharel. My mother received it in my early youth as a guest gift from an American-Philippine exchange student. Of course, I soon had to hold my curious nose up to the white frosted glass bottle. My scent was bright and light like the bottle: white flowers, spring-like on a green base. On special occasions I was also allowed to wear a touch of Anais Anais. With the delicate but long-lasting scent of white lily, hyacinth and lily of the valley, I felt irresistible right away. Anais Anais was for me simply "the most beautiful fragrance in the world".

Immersed in my girlish dreams, it was to take a few more years before I could call Anais Anais my own. At the age of 17, after four weeks in an international youth camp in Trois-Rivières (near Quebec in Canada), I bought Anais Anais in the duty free shop at Montreal Airport on my way back home. Actually, I was suffering from a broken heart at that time, as I had fallen "immortally" in love with an Italian with an extremely Roman profile. Anais Anais successfully relieved the pain. I still remember that the scent immediately earned me a compliment at the airport. Pierre Brice.....well, not quite, so an older gentleman (probably he was just 30 *laughs*) addressed me in French and said how wonderfully this scent suited me.


The prelude of Anais Anais is mainly determined by white flowers. White lily, hyacinth and lily of the valley dance a powdery, airy dance. Soft and tender carnation, orange blossom and rose join in, accompanied by a touch of tuberose. Green accents of oak moss and honeysuckle lend a delicate, tangy freshness - a good counterbalance to the floral elements that could otherwise slip into the pompous.
Durability and depth give light sandalwood, ylang ylang and amber - or patchouli? - in the base, which my nose, however, perceives only very reservedly as warm and woody. All in all, Anais Anais remains springlike throughout, a classic chypre scent whose green, tart notes always resonate.

On my skin, the fragrance lasts for 8 hours, with the floral accents always present. At the beginning the flowers whirl around fresh and quite lively, the lily is especially present for my nose. Little by little the dance ebbs away and combines to a bright bouquet, which is gently underlined by carnation and hyacinth.

One thing Anais Anais is not: elegant. But compared to an elegant lily scent like Cartier's meringue Volé, for example, it is so charming that it makes all the critics smile away.