Arthur Capel was nicknamed Boy by Coco Chanel – three letters were all it took to seal an entire destiny. The love of Gabrielle’s life, the first to believe in the Mademoiselle’s talent, he would give her the means to reach her ends… She loved to borrow his custom tweed jackets. “Since you’re so attached, Capel told me, I’ll have you made an ‘elegant’ version of what you wear everyday, at an English tailor.” Coco once told. Thanks to the funds he invested in the opening of her very first boutique – which she would reimburse in its entirety out of her initial profits, a sign of her unfailing independence – Chanel would never cease to open up and to revolutionize the silhouette of women of her day. In the arms of the man she loved was born all the fundamental rules of the house on rue Cambon.
Boy was an intellectual of calibre, interested as much in politics as he was in frivolity – he was the one who initiated Coco into the occult, symbology, and Asian cultures. The rest is history. But what is lesser known is the power, the euphoria of their love that is today captured in the architectural flask of the label’s new fragrance, simply called Boy Chanel.
An olfactory homage to an eloquent passion and a perpetual game of masculine and feminine, this fragrance is today being added to the ranks of Chanel’s ‘Les Exclusifs’. For it’s this fleeting passion, this enchanted moment in time, that inspired the brand’s perfumer Olivier Polge – with the help of historical portraits, this nose took interest in Boy’s influence on Gabrielle. Inspired by the virile strength of man, in awe of Coco’s frail silhouette, Olivier Polge forges a masculine mythology here that pushed him towards ferns. Then, just like Gabrielle Chanel, who appropriated the male wardrobe without ever renouncing her femininity, the perfumer plays with a mixing of genders by imagining the lingering traces of a man on a woman’s skin. A sleek and aromatic burst announces the heart note of rose geranium – all sealed in a monolithic and purified glass structure with a double-C monogrammed stopper. This soft yet powerful fragrance is available now.
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