If 1957 by Chanel were a mood, it would be a flash of mental clarity. It has the ergonomic purity of museum buildings built by architects dreaming of an android future, but none of their sterility. It just feels like noise falling away.
I hesitate to say that any white musk material smells expensive, because those materials are generally quite cheap, but this particular combination smells like it went to school in Switzerland and has a twelve-step Korean skincare regimen. The musk – or more likely musks plural – smell thick and silky, like the air pumped through the vents of a five star hotel. After spending much time with 1957 over the past year, I think what’s remarkable is not so much its smoothness but the absence of things that don’t belong, like a scratchy aromachemical or an annoying lactone. When the lily is enough, you stop gilding. And that is what you pay Chanel prices for.
The scent is built on an impressively layered sub-structure of aldehydes, which, on paper at least, should put this firmly in the No. 22 or No. 5 camp. But while I understand that the perception of texture, like soapiness, powderiness, or fizz, is deeply subjective, I am never not a little confused by the fact that for a perfume so stuffed with aldehydes and white musks, 1957 doesn’t smell – to my nose at least – particularly like soap, powder, or champagne.
Instead, to me at least, it smells like musk blown through a Waterford glass of artisanal lemonade, one made with slightly flat mineral water and a dollop of aged, brown-ish honey that has crystallised slightly at the bottom. This suffuses the musk with a blush of dried saliva, it clean, architectural angularity parting its lips here and there to reveal something shockingly human, even a little (dare I say) dank. This is, I realise, the only way I can truly love a white musk. Give me the ‘posh hotel pillow’ expansiveness of a good white musk, yes, but if you really want me locked in, give me a hint of freshly-licked skin too.
Source of Sample: I purchased my bottle of 1957 directly from Chanel in Dublin’s Brown Thomas.
Cover Image: Photo by Robin Schreiner on Unsplash
