Perfume-Chanel-Coco Noir

Coco Noir by Chanel had been quite anticipation among perfumistas. Let’s face it, it is a Chanel scent and many of us know of Chanel No.5 perfume long before we actually wear any perfumes. Naturally there is a sense of being compelled to test this scent. Also, ‘Coco’ plus ‘Noir’ somewhat unites the older and the newer generation of Chanel wearers. For those who only knows about Coco Mademoiselle, this is a chance to go to the darker side; while those who praises the rich, golden juice of Chanel, can have an opportunity to test something, potentially engineered towards the younger market.

The bottle of Coco Noir inherits the original Coco’s or Coco Mademoiselle’s square bottle design, but in black. Being the first Chanel perfume bottle in black! It does have some magic and psyched me up to test it.

About the scent, the opening is a reminiscent of both Coco Mademoiselle and Coco, it has the fresh, sparkling patchouli-hinted watery sweet floral aspect of the modern chypre, which Coco Mademoiselle has, while under the sweet watery “spontaneous fun”, the slightly tart, old-glamour, opulent floral sweet part of Coco comes up. Somehow, momentarily, Coco Noir also reminds me of Chance by Chanel, minus the heaviness.

To be honest, I have never been a fan of Coco Medomoiselle, maybe it screams “I’m-fun, sporty yet classy” too much to my liking; while I adored Coco, the spicy aspect and the iconic Chanel-y accord just does not smell that compatible to a 20something who does not dress up in smart suit. Well, now…here comes Coco Noir, I know it is unfair to compare Coco Noir to either Coco Mademoiselle or Coco, but…I do find Coco Noir a polite in-between version of the other two.

The drydown of Coco Noir is quite pretty, a bit vanilla in a powdery sense and with the typical Chanel-y accord been less predominant, it is warm, soft, sweet but not overly so; the whole scent smells quite well-blended to suit a typical working girl who does not want the Chanel-power-suit type of persona.

Maybe I had higher hopes for Coco Noir (I was anticipating something along the Les Exclusifs de Chanel line, like Coromandel), thus the actual scent does not stand out much to me. Personally, I am not a big Chanel fan when it’s about perfumes, but I would still recommend this one simply because it is Chanel making a daily upper-end commercial scent, which does smell of good quality.