Comparative Review of Gabrielle Chanel Parfum, the Original and Essence
Fragrance Reviews

As Eddie rightly noted about another Chanel fragrance (Why Bleu de Chanel now smells better than ever before), everything is evaluated in the context of time and situation. My attitude towards both Bleu and Gabrielle has changed for the better – perfume fashion is changing, and brands are trying to be noted in it, while Chanel, on the contrary, is in no hurry to anchor itself to a certain time, at least in their main and my favorite regular collection. Therefore, Chanel does not remain stuck in a time that inevitably passes, taking with it the popular tuberoses, cozy ambers, woods, and vanilla; everything that sooner or later becomes obsolete. Chanel creates perfumes with a margin for long-term popularity – we’re not presented with Chanel’s amber or vanilla, but with perfume individualities – Coco, Coco Mademoiselle, or Gabrielle.

Gabrielle has, in my opinion, the most wonderful bottle. Thin glass and beautiful geometry – the larger the bottle, the more pleasing to the eye its proportions are in relation to the cap. Color and shape matter; they visually represent the personality of each fragrance – the round Chance is round, not square! Nevertheless, Chanel organically stays true to their image; even radically changing the shape, they miraculously retain the style of the house.

Gabrielle, as an important new release, received its own bronze-silver color and a new bottle, which is reminiscent of the house’s first simple designs and at the same time looks new and hi-tech. Symbolic!

Before the release of Essence, I got used to the bronze color; it suited the ascetic unsweetened aroma, just as cold and icy. With Essence, the perfumer added gold to the composition: he thickened the precious jasmines, poured in soft fruits, and reduced the sharp grapefruit. If you put the two bottles next to each other, the color of Essence’s fragrance and the cap look more like gold than bronze.

Gabrielle, and then Gabrielle Essence, did not seem particularly outstanding; they rather smelled like well-balanced generic fragrances made from expensive ingredients – this last circumstance was emphasized by the brand, and I remembered it as its main feature; yes, the perfume smells expensive. And with increasing concentration, this impression intensifies, including the visual one – the tone of the Gabrielle Parfum cap is even more yellow, as is the color of the liquid. And the gold of the label and the interior of the box are stylized as “old” gold, uneven and cracked. But these nuances are revealed to the eye when the fragrance is unpacked – the bronze-silver signature tone of Gabrielle is sustained on the outside.

Gabrielle Parfum is spherical jasmine. Despite the deliberate abstractness of the composition, jasmine is still felt the most. Not a natural floral jasmine, but precious perfume jasmine added drop by drop to the once most expensive fragrance in the world, Joy by Jean Patou. A high concentration makes it fleshy and golden. I noticed this effect already in Gabrielle Essence, which may have lost much of its individuality when compared to the original, but has become thicker and more precious. Probably, jasmine was chosen for a reason – what in perfumery can be more generic and more precious?

Changing the face of the fragrance now seems like a deliberate step. The thin and awkward Kristen Stewart represents the young Gabrielle Chanel (not literally, of course, but rather as an idea, persona & company). She breaks the ice and enjoys the dawn of life. Kristen, like Lily-Rose Depp, perfectly embodies the Chanel style – original, sensual, big-eyed, thin, and adorably clunky; it’s about beautifully and spontaneously outlined French women. However, with the level of gold increased in Essence and then in the new Parfum, they are too teenage-y to advertise it. They don’t look like a million dollars. Margot Robbie does.

Margot Robbie for Gabrielle Chanel, Courtesy: Chanel

Margot Robbie, who advertizes Essence and now parfum, looks like a Hollywood diva of rare beauty at the top of her fame; she is not looking into the distance with hope but already has everything. She knows both glory and luxury and has the intention to enjoy them. Everyone likes Margot Robbie (especially in her role of lovely Sharon Tate); she is simply perfect. The ideal woman has traits that many admire and which, however blasphemous it sounds, are stereotypical. And yet people appreciate them. A timeless, significant perfume should be just the same – carrying something that follows the standard of beauty, like the same eternal jasmine – something that will be beautiful both today and tomorrow. If this is really how it was intended, then I take my hat off to Chanel’s marketers.

Gabrielle parfum smells like the golden essences of flowers – after looking at the golden design and hearing the story, I can see these precious drops. The fragrance, however, is impenetrable for emotional analysis; it’s elusive yet substantial. Gold is a suitable comparison for it since it’s an ideal and inevitably stereotyped beauty. Do you have any special emotions about gold? Everyone knows it, appreciates it, and everything else is measured in it. The house’s ambitions are mind-blowing! Especially when they are not openly declared but are promoted as something absolutely natural.

I can’t say at this point, having worn the fragrance only for a short time, that this is all I need in life, but I sit in it and smell great; the sillage of the scent is soft and beautiful, luxurious, and at the same time it’s hard to tell what I particularly like or dislike about it. As with gold, it just exists; it’s precious. The fragrance seems to be above my opinion about it. A scent that claims to encompass a whole class of scents.

Gabrielle parfum is rooted in Gabrielle Essence, but it is more delicately woven, juicy in a floral way, much softer, sunnier, without a beginning and end – you don’t wait for anything to develop; you get everything best at once. It has more flowers and less wood, which is especially true for its final notes; there are no prickly uncertain citruses like in the original. Everything is perfectly rounded and sweet, not like candy, but like a sweet-sweet life.

Gabrielle parfum smells like perfume, in the same way as we used to think of Chanel No 5 when the word perfume came up. Gabrielle parfum is general enough and, at the same time, precious enough for such a definition.

Photographs of the author’s bottles