As any Parisian woman worth her Isabel Marant boots will tell you, it’s imperfection - a larger nose, charmingly crooked teeth - that elevates a conventionally pretty face to truly beautiful. It’s the same in fashion. Adding something old and beat-up, or sentimental or just plain offspeed to your outfit ensures you still look like you and that you didn’t just buy your whole ensemble straight off the store mannequin.
Chanel’s latest ‘Les Eaux’ Paris-Paris abides by this unspoken rule as well. It has a quiet, unexpected edge that is ineffably, truly Parisian, because the real Paris isn’t only those endless perfect cups of coffee on marble tables that you see on Instagram. The real Paris can actually be pretty gritty - the traffic, jostling with a sea of humanity in the Metro, inhaling diesel fumes belched from trucks as you sit in a boulevard café - and it’s that contrast that Paris-Paris embodies. It’s a rose scent, but it is much more than yet another rose scent.
Paris-Paris opens like a light, summery fragrance. There’s freshness courtesy of citrus and pink pepper and damascena rose, bright but still plush. But give it a minute and there’s a surprisingly insistent patchouli rumbling away underneath, adding a whisper of (and I really hate to use this word in case it gets misconstrued) ‘dirty’ to that bright rose. It’s the perfect alluring scent for a languorous dinner — one those evenings spent around the table for hours, while the candles gutter and dessert is long finished. Paris-Paris is earthy, but it’s quietly, discreetly earthy. Not quite unwashed, but it definitely alludes to the human animal wearing it.
So whether you read Paris-Paris as light and unimpeachably daytime chic or as more of an evening fragrance, consider it your summer-in-the-city scent that will easily go into fall and beyond.
