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Post by casandra on Jun 28, 2015 19:02:48 GMT
I'm too young to have met the original formulation of Coco Chanel (or too young to have known what I was smelling if I was smelling it), but to be honest I enjoy the one recently on the market. Also, I suspect I wouldn't have been as much in love with the original one as I am with this "scented water", because perfumes labled as powerhouses are usually too powerful to my taste. Nonetheless I feel sorry for all of you who are suffering from the recent reduced quality. Facing reformulation is never a joy, but in this case I belong to the minority who likes it.
I got it for the blast of cloves in the opening. I've been contemplating between this and Jungle L'Elephant, but I've got a good 10+ ml decant of that one which will last me years considering its strength and power, so I chose the milder Coco. I love the spices in the opening which make Coco my most preferred Christmas time perfume. Amber is the strongest note on me though with opoponax, which with time turns sweeter - vanilla and tonka arriving into focus - and woody. At one point in the beginning there's a weird accord in it, which very well could be the animalic note, but that fades in 30 mins. Altogether Coco smells much less complex than the list of notes suggest. I can smell a hint of roses, but I would have never guessed any other flowers or fruits in there for example.
True, it's not extraordinarily longlasting and sillage isn't huge either, but it still lasts a good 8-10 hours on me, and it's good enough to me. |
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Post by casandra on Jun 28, 2015 19:03:01 GMT
You can tell it's supposed to be Coco because the top notes are more or less intact. But it has no middle, and no base. Everything that made Coco rich and voluptuous is gone. The reformulation isn't just thin, it is downright gaunt, bony, hollow-eyed, with its rings hanging off of its fingers, pointing to perdition.
Not a fan. I'm not a knee-jerk "get the vintage" type, there are quite a few reformulations I prefer to the vintage at this point. This is not one of them. Get the vintage.
Be aware that the reformulation is a sketch of the original, not a reproduction or improvement, unless you actually want a thin spice perfume, and I guess I might. The more I live with this, the more I realize that there aren't many feminine spice perfumes that aren't also quite heavy. This might be perfectly fine taken on its own merits, as a very sheer, very thin, very wispy spicy veil of warmth. It has absolutely no body whatsoever, but I guess that might have its place in the world, but you have to kind of set aside the fact that it's wearing Coco's nametag and take it as Coco Lite. I'm keeping it to layer with Original Coco, which is too loud and 80s for most people. Wearing one spritz of the original on the torso and one each of the new on the wrists would probably socialize Coco into the 21st century for daytime wear.
Also, vintage bottles are way more likely to be old counterfeits than legit. Educate yourself on how to tell fake from true. That said, I think many of the old counterfeits from back in the 80s and 90s actually smell more like Coco than the new legit one does, as I've had a few counterfeit bottles that were pretty damn close to smelling right. I guess even the counterfeiters used to have more class.
If the vintage gets too spendy, you could probably layer this with Ambre Sultan and get sort of close to it. In the sense that Omaha is sort of a city.
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