Bleu de CHANEL Eau de Toilette

Chanel places Bleu de CHANEL among the aromatic-woody fragrances and names three things: bright citrus, a powerful aromatic accord, a woody breath of cedar notes. New Caledonian sandalwood carries, according to the house, the warm trail of the whole line.

What the 2010 press kit names

Kevin, at Now Smell This, took up in August 2010 the list Chanel gave to Women’s Wear Daily: bergamot, lemon, grapefruit, a marine accord, peppermint, pink pepper, nutmeg, ginger, jasmine, cedar, vetiver, patchouli, labdanum and incense.

The tiering, as Kevin cuts it

The house publishes no order. Kevin describes an opening of bergamot and grapefruit lifted by peppermint, a rise of nutmeg and ginger around a floral accent close to that of Eau Sauvage.

The base, for him, rests on a pale cedar, a lemony musk and an incense ash. The order kept here comes from his reading, not from a statement by the house.

What the label declares

The Chanel list for the 50 ml spray gives forty-one entries in full disclosure, under formula code PS000065A. Tetramethyl acetyloctahydronaphthalenes, the INCI name of Iso E Super, comes fourth, ahead of every other odorous ingredient.

Three entries on the label appear in no published list of notes: lavender, coumarin and oakmoss, the three classic supports of a fougère. Jeanne Doré described a mentholated woody lavender in 2010, and Auparfum classes Bleu as a fougère.

The white musk carried by many lists stays out: Chanel discloses the whole formula and names no musk in it. The marine accord of the press kit belongs to launch vocabulary and to no named raw material.