EDITED TO ADD: There is one of those uber expensive Guerlain La Fontaine Imperiale with Mon Precieux Nectar inside thingies on Ebay . Notes are orange blossom, jasmine, bitter almond, wood, vanilla and musk. If it’s reasonable in the end, I’ll bid if there’s enough takers to split it. So if any of you were thinking, um, yeah! But wanted it at a better price, clickety click on the Contact Us and let me know! Even if you told me before. If it can be bought for 5-7k, it’s 1,000 ml, so the cost would be $5-7 per ml. hey, it’s better than $9-10! And there are only 63 of them that were sold in the world. I know, it’s annoying, but tell me you don’t want some.
After the great success of Chanel No. 5 Eau Premiere, they decided to go back and see if lightning would strike twice. could they take a classic and update it enough to keep the admirers of it happy, but entice in a new generation?
I have several variations of Cristalle around here, but I deliberately did not smell them because I wanted to evaluate this on its own as far as the success of this updated flanker. It’s got a nice fresh green open that fairly snaps and pops at you, and I very much like that, veering off into some citrus. It stays fresh while the magnolia emerges as we enter the heart. Notes are Sicilian lemon, bergamot, neroli, jasmine, magnolia accord, abstract white flowers. It’s certainly a nice perfume, feels Chanel-like, definitely a more modern approach to Cristalle, if you were wanting it modernized, but it lost the chypre’ness that was part of the original Cristalle EDT (differentiated from the EDP, which I never liked so well). I think it’s beautifully done, though I think you really have to look it as a completely different perfume from Cristalle EDT or EDP.
Eau Verte is a lovely green magnolia fragrance, easy to wear. I’m not doing backflips over it because it doesn’t smell very distinctive or special in the way Cristalle or I think any Chanel should smell. Do I think Chanel succeeded? Yes, I do, for the same reason I think they did with Eau Premiere. They have taken a classic, retained a piece of the classic, but rendered out a lot of the “old-fashioned” parts that turn off a lot of young women. Whether we old ladies like it or not, women in their 20s – not all of them – don’t want to smell of aldehydes and oakmoss, that makes them feel old, and they want something fresh and modern. Cristalle Eau Verte is made for them, but I wouldn’t turn down wearing it from time to time – old biddy that I am.
Now, Chanel did send me a small bottle of this, so you know what that means!! We’ll give away 10 samples of it. Just drop a comment in to be entered in the drawing.
As for this updating of classics, what’s the best update of a classic that’s been done, in your opinion. And secondly, if you were a perfume company with a long and storied name, like Guerlain or Chanel or YSL or Dior (Dior, you disappoint me the most), what kinds of perfumes would you put out that would keep your old customers happy, but draw in new customers? What’s the business model that would work? Two different lines, flankers like Chanel does?
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