La Pausa

28, La Pausa celebrates the magnificent villa that Gabrielle Chanel owned, and the fragrance composed by Jacques Polge sets out to render the flowers of her extraordinary garden… 28 La Pausa celebrates iris and translates into scent the emotions of Gabrielle's dreamed-of Mediterranean.

La Pausa, Coco Chanel's retreat turned into a fragrance by Jacques Polge for Les Exclusifs

The Les Exclusifs collection by Chanel draws, in precious olfactory portraits, the great values and the most beautiful memories of the house of Chanel and of its beloved founder Gabrielle Chanel. With this collection, Jacques Polge selects the rarest perfumery raw materials to depict the whimsical and enchanted world of the great Coco Chanel. If every fragrance in Les Exclusifs is a journey into the past, 28 La Pausa also presents itself as a journey through the Mediterranean.

Indeed, Jacques Polge composed La Pausa as a tribute to the magnificent villa that Gabrielle Chanel had built in 1928 in Roquebrune Cap Martin. A villa she decorated entirely in keeping with her contrasting tastes, between suprème luxury and utter simplicity, between cascades of gilding and an almost monastic façade.

Upon the lady's death, La Pausa was forgotten, but fortunately the house of Chanel chose to buy back this iconic residence in 2015. To celebrate this return to its roots, Jacques Polge designed a La Pausa as contrasted and powerful as this building, in order to honor Coco Chanel in her most beautiful contradictions.

An iris exalted between luxury and simplicity for the fragrance 28 La Pausa

In order to compose La Pausa as an exact olfactory portrait of the residence that Gabrielle Chanel designed for her rest in the Mediterranean, Jacques Polge chose to work almost exclusively with iris, Gabrielle's favorite flower. But an iris more unprecedented than in other Chanel fragrances, as it appears at times powdery and luxurious, at times very green, almost earthy, as if to become more sober and natural.

To begin the journey in 28 La Pausa, what could be better than offering fruity, tangy notes of pink pepper enhanced with lovely fresh lemons? Then the splendors of jasmine come to illuminate the magnificent iris pallida, which powders the whole with its floral opulence. But the powdery flowers soon become warmer and more ambery through their encounter with the sensual depths of La Pausa. Ambrette reveals iris in its most earthy face, while carrying us toward mysterious vetivers that offer a new and much darker face to this exalted iris.

To evoke the luxury and simplicity of Mademoiselle Chanel's holiday home, Jacques Polge revealed the facets and contrasts of iris pallida: earthy and powdery, radiant and secret. A sober and elegant powdery woody floral. Chanel on 28 La Pausa.