I wore Chanel's Pour Monsieur today, a classic fragrance first released in the 1950s. The perfume is essentially a citrus top with a classic oakmoss and vetiver dry down. It smells good, but I'd hazard a guess that many of today's mainstream target market would find it a bit old fashioned and dated.
There are people who swear that Pour Monsieur has not changed over the years, but I find that incredibly hard to believe considering it is now in its 7th decade of production, and the restrictions on oakmoss.
I have to admit that to my nose it smells as if Pour Monsieur has changed in the five years since I first tried it. It smells sweeter than it used to. It always had a slight powdery facet to it, but used to smell dryer, I think. Who knows for sure.
To add a twist to today's proceedings, I layered Pour Monsieur with Diptyque's Tam Dao, which is a fairly austere sandalwood fragrance, almost incense-like. I'm not totally sure if this combination worked, but Tam Dao did temper Pour Monsieur's green sweetness, which I enjoyed.
I could be writing total tripe here, but my recent sniffs of Chanel No 19 also seem to reveal that it too smells sweeter than it used to a few years ago. Am I just imagining things? I'd be interested to find out.
They probably are both sweeter. And your nose is almost certainly telling you the truth. Was writing about Chanel today, saw this and thought, "Hurrah!" not the only person to catch changes in Chanels. Bois des Isles smelled strongly of Australian sandalwood (or some such substitute) at the height of the sandalwood shortages!
ReplyDeleteBlacknall, thanks for the comment and your view. The only version of Bois des Isles that I've smelt is the reissue with the Exclusif line, so I don't have anything else to compare it to.
DeleteI smelled Pour Monsieur for the first time this week. Took home the posh blotter from the Chanel stand. Not a bad one this PM, smells pretty good. Better than I expected but a bit dated too, not necessarily a bad thing though. PM shares something similar to my older bottles of Eau Sauvage. Most likely the oakmoss. Perhaps Chanel uses a tweaked oakmoss, one with the offending oakmoss parts taken out. If so Dior should do that too with Eau Sauvage and bring it back to its former glory.
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