Jersey

From this small revolution in masculine-feminine style, Jacques Polge retained all its audacity and offered in 2011 a fragrance paying tribute to the great lady's creativity, under the unusual name of Jersey. Playing with codes and styles, Jersey innovates and presents its lavender scents in a bath of refinement and absolute femininity.

The Jersey fragrance and its vibrant tribute to Coco Chanel's audacity by Jacques Polge

Gabrielle Chanel was a great trailblazer in matters of fashion and style; one of her most brilliant innovations was to borrow the traditional jersey fabric of seamen and men's undergarments to create women's suits that beautifully redrew the curves of the female body. A striking act of audacity for 1920s fashion, which practically never mixed the masculine and the feminine.

It is to pay tribute to this innovation of Coco's that Jacques Polge, in-house perfumer at Chanel since 1985, chose to create Jersey in 2011 as part of the Les Exclusifs de Chanel collection. Just like the beloved founder of the house of Chanel, the perfumer would take pleasure in breaking gender codes and blending the masculine with the feminine by using a powerful lavender note, a classic of masculine perfumery.

Drawing inspiration from the astonishing composition of one of its most brilliant predecessors, Pour Un Homme by Caron, Jacques Polge transforms, for Jersey, that so “masculine” lavender into an elixir of femininity, softness, and suave gourmand character. Just as Coco managed to make jersey—until then so virile—so sexy.

When lavender becomes a femme fatale, it becomes Jersey by Chanel

Jersey was born of a desire: to pay tribute to the fabulous audacity of Gabrielle Chanel's creations. But Jersey was also born of an encounter, that of Jacques Polge with a grower in the Languedoc who was cultivating a lavender far softer and silkier than usual. The magazine Flair Flair recounts that, while interviewing Jacques Polge a little over a year ago, he revealed that it was his encounter with the supplier of a “formidable”—and very expensive—lavender that had inspired the idea for Jersey.

Jersey opens on the notes of this precious lavender while carrying us into the aromatic, dynamic heights of clary sage. At the heart, Jersey continues its journey into pure freshness with a powerful hedione. But this wave of intense freshness is soon countered by a powdery note of delicate iris, which offers lavender a gift of absolute femininity. The gourmand qualities of vanilla and tonka bean, combined with a cloud of white musks, wrap Jersey in a halo of floral and powdery notes of surprising delicacy.

JERSEY, a powdery floral aromatic, offering a soft, refined lavender of rare quality. Wrapped in white musks and lifted by a touch of vanilla, it sheds its boyish air and reveals itself as floral. Chanel on Jersey, Les Exclusifs.