It’s a fact that industries tend to maintain a stereotypical vision of society, sex, and gender. Now Chanel is once more going against the grain with a monolithic bottle that encloses Boy, a genderless perfume imagined by Olivier Polge. The formula begins with the discovery of a photograph of Boy and Coco: their allure, their mad love visible to the naked eye… It took an entire essence to translate 12 years of passion into a series of shots that are faded with age.
The second olfactory opus from the nose behind the Les Exclusifs de Chanel line, Olivier Polge offers a new interpretation of an act as anodine as it is perpetual – a woman dressed in her man’s clothing. And yet, the perfumer didn’t intend to create a unisex perfume, but rather to make a typically masculine olfactory concoction more feminine by getting women to wear it. Anchored in the codes of masculinity, Boy breaks all the rules of perfumery.
Ferns, an emblem of virile fragrances, are primarily accompanied by lavender with notes of coumarin. By observing Gabrielle up close, Olivier Polge realized how sumptuously feminine she was in men’s clothing. That’s why for the base notes, the nose can detect grapefruit, rose, and geranium. It’s further softened with soft almond musks to finally awaken what ends up becoming a universally chic composition.
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