Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Chanel Cristalle Eau Verte - It's actually good for something


...just not as a perfume.

It's not like I had high expectations from Chanel Cristalle Eau Verte. When it comes to the Cristalle range, I don't really get the EDT (I wear the EDP), but I can (sort of) appreciate it for what it is. Knowing that Eau Verte is most likely the post-IFRA replacement for the original EDT on its real citrus and oakmoss should have been enough of a warning. After all, I smelled the newly reformulated Eau d'Hadrien (Goutal) and wanted to cry. Whatever they use now to replace citrus oil is not very convincing, but I hoped Jacques Polge might succeed where Isabelle Doyen had failed.

The first whiff of Cristalle Eau Verte goes straight to my head, but not in a good way. It's sharp, sour and takes a few brain cells and my nose tissue before it burns off. From then on things mellow down considerably into a sheer and pleasant lemonade-limeade. If you squint and try hard enough to find it, there might be a floral thing going, but not enough to bloom in this acidic potion. No matter how much I spray, the perfume doesn't last after an hour and a half, which might not be a bad thing, because a couple more hours of this would have bored me to death. There's just nothing there to capture my attention and interest. I would never have guessed Cristalle Eau Verte was a Chanel. It lacks any hint of cheekbones and good breeding one might expect from this house.

But I promised a positive angle, so here it is: while testing and hopelessly spraying, trying to make Eau Verte work, I got a good amount on my clothes. Unlike my skin, a cardigan and a yoga jacket managed to retain the scent for several hours, and it worked a lot better on fabric. The scent was a bit sweeter and more balanced and pleasant. So there you have it, for $105 you can have a 3.4 oz bottle of refreshing linen spray.

Chanel Cristalle Eau Verte is available from Bergdorf and Neiman Marcus for the unreasonable price I mentioned above. I managed to drain a couple of samples from these stores before giving up on it.

Art: Sparks by Pamela Sukhum

4 comments:

  1. "So there you have it, for $105 you can have a 3.4 oz bottle of refreshing linen spray."

    Laughing. So. Hard.

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  2. I'd somehow hoped that Hadrien would avoind reformulation, and I don't want to smell the result at all

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  3. Wait-why are they reformulating scents without citrus oil? Please clue me in, I love Eau de Hadrien and the Cristalle EDT (the EDP is not the same scent imho) and this is disturbing.

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  4. I think you are wrong in your review, because it is probably your skin chemistry that is not working with the Eau Verte.
    It works fantastic on my skin and the smell at the end of the day is definitely flowery, even if the citrus was the first note.. the flowers are always behind it!
    Oh.. and BTW i get non-stop comments from people about it, a lady at a clothing store was just holding a garment I had tried on earlier to her nose and saying "what is this, it is fantastic!".
    So there you have it.. don't judge a perfume only for what it does for YOU.

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