A bird of paradise made sing the deliciously baroque perfume
In 1984, Madame Gabrielle Chanel, known as Coco, has been gone for over ten years. The fashion and perfume house Chanel is the orphan of this whimsical designer with a thousand ideas. In order to pay tribute to him, Jacques Polge will be asked to create a perfume in his image. Oriental, baroque and terribly original, Coco was born to quickly become a cult fragrance for the house of Chanel thanks to its composition of course, but also thanks to its legendary advertising film by Jean-Paul Goude.
When Coco de Chanel meets a beautiful bird in a golden cage …
Since the death of Gabrielle Chanel in 1971, the house of Chanel has lost its flagship designer, its beloved founder with mad energy and multiple inventions. Apart from the pretty Cristalle, no other perfume has seen the light of day. Yet the honorable perfume house will have a genius idea: to give thanks to its much-regretted founder through a new fragrance. It will be the great Jacques Polge who will be in charge of this daring mission.
Thus the perfumer will seek to be inspired by the magnificent personality of the one we called Coco to develop a perfumed composition to his measure. It was while visiting his old apartment with baroque decorations that the idea of a spicy oriental fragrance with multiple “faces” came to Jacques Polge. This magnificent contrasting and rich creation named Coco will be released in 1984.
Coco’s success is immediate. Each woman finds in this powerful perfume scents which correspond to a sensual and marked femininity. The choice of Chanel muses for Coco will not be made by chance either because Inès de la Fressange, the first ambassador of Coco, looks a lot like Gabrielle Chanel!
As for the second muse, Vanessa Paradis, she will give Coco an image that will remain etched in all memories. Indeed, the very young actress on the rise will be filmed by Jean-Paul Goude in an absolutely divine advertisement which will be released in 1991. The beauty becomes a whistling bird in a cage stirring up the lust of a huge cat who watches her half amused, half crestfallen. The beauty of the image like that of the actress as well as the rather grandiose special effects for the time, will make this advertisement for Coco a cult film in the history of perfumery.
Coco de Chanel or the “baroque score with oriental, floral and spicy notes”
Coco de chanel is above all, as we have seen, a tribute to the founder of Chanel as to her prettiest creations. Logically enough, therefore, the Coco bottle will be almost similar to the one created for Chanel N ° 5 . Aside from the gold and black colors of the label, the Coco bottle carries with it all the elegance of the house’s first fragrance.
Coconut opens with citrus notes of Sicilian mandarin, enhanced with the velvety smoothness of juicy peach and invigorating coriander. At the heart, the jasmine absolute and the May rose offer their delicate beauties to a ylang-ylang and a mimosa absolutely radiant with flowering lights. A few cloves spice up this bewitching flowery blend with their fragrant scents.
The depths of Coco will be even warmer thanks to the animal forces of civet married to wonderful ambers and divine vanilla. An oriental beauty whose creator, Jacques Polge, will say: “Coco recreates on the Western world a climate of amber and spices until then reserved for the Orient”.
In 2012 the little sister Coco Noir entered the scene.
