MY FAVORITE BLEU JEANS ~ Bleu de Chanel

This is what I call my Chanel for Bleu Jeans fragrance and I will tell you why.  There have been quite a few reviews around Fragrance town decrying Bleu de Chanel as being  disappointing. Not up to the standards of pervious Chanel scents. So this is my  experience with the fragrance.

While shopping a month or so back for a  new Chanel I picked up Egoiste Platinum and while I was looking at the various Chanels for men to expand my  horizons and add to my one and only Pour Monsieur the salesperson asked if she  could spay some Bleu on a card for me. I said sure, why not? I could take in  maybe one more sniff before my nose closed up shop. Well, that one little sniff  blew my Bleu socks off! I almost bought it on the spot but had already set my  shopping limit for the month. So I filed my Bleu card away for a future  purchase.

Last Saturday it was so incredibly beautiful here in San  Francisco and on a gorgeous day lots of San Franciscan naturally hightail it for  our magnificent shopping district around Union Square. I was moved by sun and  blue skies to visit our Chanel Boutique. I dressed for the occasion since I am  old fashioned and think one should never leave the house on a shopping  expedition looking less than smashing. Black Jeans, black cashmere turtle neck,  black spit shined loafers, chunky steel bracelet, a not so chunky yet stylish  gunmetal watch and a pair of Ray Ban Wayfarers. One quick check in the mirror  and I set off for my adventure.

(CHANEL MEN’S WEAR)

I was in and out of Chanel so fast that  the door on Maiden Lane didn’t have a chance to close. Then I popped over to  have a light lunch at the Sir Francis Drake and following that headed home to  un-box my little treasure. I really got a kick out of the bottle, a kind of film  noir blue black moderne take on the No.5 bottle design with a really nifty cap  that is magnetized so that it clicks back on in the same position with the  locked double C’s always facing front perfectly. A nice touch don’t you think? I  sprayed my wrist and sniffed…. Hum? Then I sprayed my collar bone. “That’s odd,  it’s kind of….hum?” I thought. And a final spritz behind my ears.

(BRAD KROENIG AND HIS SON HUDSON)

It was  not at all what it had seemed in the store the month before. What had happened? Where was that oh my god sensation? It was nice, it was interesting, and it was  perfectly fine. But something was missing. As the day wore on I discovered it  has some wonderful aspects about it. I love how the incense, ginger and peeper  all work together and it lasted on me a reasonable 5 to 6 hours. Yet still I was  vaguely disappointed. During the week at work it drew rave reviews. And that  puzzled me. THEY loved it; they wanted to know What it was that made it so  unique and exciting. Why did they find it so wonderful and I found it to be just …fine? To me it wasn’t the magic Chanel we all dream of, what we hope to find in  each new Chanel offering. It was just dare I say it, a work-a-day  Chanel.

(ANNA WINTUR SMILES!)

Then it hit me. It smelled just the same as it had in the store;  the only thing that had changed was me. I had been obsessing over that smell for  over a month, and in that time I had turned that sense memory of Bleu into  something it could not live up to. No perfume could. I had let the aura and  history of “Chanel” out Chanel the Chanel! It was fine and I liked it just fine,  and that is fine. Not every Chanel or any other perfume house can hit it out of  the park each time. But what Chanel did with Bleu de Chanel was make a good  everyday perfume. Something nice to throw on when you feel like being casual and  elegant around your frayed edges, like a pair of comfortable blue jeans. They  fit well and you know exactly what to expect from them, and they are classics in  their own way. So that is why I call my Bleu de Chanel my Chanel for blue jeans.

(MOVIE STAR GILBERT ROLAND 1929 AND MY BOTTLE OF BLEU)

Four Gold Stars. ****

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