PARIS — Coco Chanel had her personal view of luck, famously crystalized within the phrase: “I noticed a possibility, and I took it.” Now, the style home is delving deeper into its company heritage by launching the fifth Likelihood perfume, known as Eau Splendide, on April 15.
Developed by in-house perfumer-creator Olivier Polge, it’s the first perfume to return out below Simona Cattaneo, president of Chanel Perfume and Magnificence.
“I really feel very honored and privileged to have joined such an iconic home that I’ve been taking a look at with lots of respect for all of my profession,” mentioned Cattaneo, in her first interview since becoming a member of Chanel in September 2024. “I’m nonetheless within the studying mode.”
Cattaneo described the home’s method to perfume as distinctive.
“At Chanel, the creation is admittedly on the coronary heart of all the pieces,” she mentioned. “Now we have in-house creators, for all our classes. What’s outstanding is that they’ve true artistic freedom.
“From the very starting, because the creation of No.5 in 1921, the temporary that Gabrielle Chanel gave to Ernest Beaux was that she needed a girl’s fragrance with a girl’s scent,” continued Cattaneo.
On the time, the fragrance business was filled with recognizable single-flower fragrances.
“She needed the sort of summary fragrance with an undefinable scent,” mentioned Cattaneo. “So this imaginative and prescient that perfume is a way of thinking, a sort of attract — is an important idea for Chanel.”
She added: “Chanel perfumes categorical a stye and concept. It’s extra concerning the imaginative and prescient. Our fragrances, our perfumes, ought to give folks the facility to turn into who they wish to be. It is a imaginative and prescient that isn’t in any respect a stereotype. This angle is kind of distinctive in perfumery.”
Simona Cattaneo
Courtesy of Chanel
Cattaneo has additionally been struck by Chanel’s skill to be in keeping with its method to perfume for greater than a century, throughout which period it has had simply 4 perfumers conceiving its scents.
“The second level of distinction for Chanel fragrances is that this undeniable fact that the home has whole management over a totally built-in worth chain,” she mentioned. “It is a dream whenever you work in perfume.”
Chanel has a improvement laboratory, in addition to the power to fabricate its personal perfumes.
“We personal our formulation and management the composition,” she mentioned. “Chanel, as an illustration, grows a big portion of the jasmine flowers and roses in our fields in Grasse.”
That provides management of the complete worth chain, together with fragrance substances’ high quality and traceability.
“This type of mastery is totally distinctive within the sector,” claimed Cattaneo.
The primary Likelihood fragrance was launched in 2003.
“Since then, it has turn into one of many main perfume collections available in the market,” mentioned Cattaneo, explaining that is true in all elements of the world.
She didn’t focus on rankings, however in keeping with Statista, Likelihood positioned fourth in the USA, sixth in Brazil and 10th in France, among the many hottest girls’s fragrances in 2023.
Likelihood joins a constellation of different Chanel perfume franchises.
“No.5 is the unapologetic female pressure. Coco Mademoiselle is the liberty to turn into who you wish to be,” mentioned Cattaneo. “Bleu de Chanel is the expression of thriller and complexity. However Likelihood is completely different — it’s vibrant, joyful, optimistic. And it’s a assortment of perfumes.
“On the subject of our imaginative and prescient of luxurious, Likelihood brings one thing completely different — an expression of easy luxurious,” she defined. “Likelihood embodies subtle lightness and luminosity. It’s a luminous assortment.”
Likelihood Eau Splendide joins the Likelihood lineup, which may very well be thought of an olfactive interpretation of luck.
“It brings one thing new to the gathering, with a really particular aspect,” mentioned Cattaneo, explaining Eau Splendide is the primary fruity floral perfume for Chanel. “It’s a brand new olfactive territory for us.”
Chanel executives wouldn’t focus on gross sales projections, however business sources estimate Eau Splendide will generate 100 million euros in first-year retail gross sales.
“Typically I’m requested what’s the hyperlink between every of these Likelihood [fragrances],” mentioned Polge. “In fact, you can all the time discover the uncooked materials, however I feel it’s extra appropriate to explain it as a way of thinking.”
Olivier Polge
Courtesy of Chanel
There’s a floral aspect, but additionally a sense and impression, in keeping with him.
“There’s something direct, which I like, about Likelihood,” mentioned Polge, calling its fragrances additionally vibrant and colourful. Every Likelihood perfume is recent, with a hanging olfactive opening. For Eau Splendide’s high notes, he appeared into various kinds of fruits.
“I ended up being keen on one accord that smells like raspberry,” he mentioned. “I showcased it in an accord as a result of apart from the pink fruit and this peach in some way that it brings, it differentiates itself from the opposite berries, as a result of it has already the beginning of a violet undertone, a rosy undertone. I assumed: ‘Ah, that’s the beginning of the fragrance.’”
The scent was developed with a pure extract of geranium rosat leaf, partly grown in Chanel’s fields.
“It has this rosy, very pure impression,” mentioned Polge, who added notes of musks and cedarwood in Eau Splendide’s base.
“It’s a cedarwood that we have now redistilled, barely cleaned of any sort of darker tones to assist the scent within the brightest approach,” he mentioned.
Eau Splendide is available in a round bottle, just like the opposite Likelihood scents, however with a violet juice. Likelihood is golden, Eau Fraîche from 2007 is mint inexperienced, Eau Tendre from 2010 is pink and Eau Vive from 2015 is peach-colored.
Eau Splendide shall be priced in France at about 122 euros for a 50-ml. eau de parfum and 168 euros for a 100-ml. edp.
“Luck, in a approach, has its half to play in happiness, but it surely takes lots of work to summon it,” mentioned Cattaneo. “It’s not a passive state, however it’s a results of an motion. That is what Gabrielle Chanel thought and what Chanel right now desires for girls — this concept of luck that’s extra about them seizing their future and each alternative that presents itself.
“That is additionally the declare of the gathering — ‘take your probability,’” mentioned Cattaneo. “That’s intentional on this planet of Chanel.”