A new Chanel fragrance is a once-in-a-decade event. And in Paris last night, the party to celebrate the launch of Gabrielle, Chanel’s first major fragrance since Chance in 2002, defined how a blockbusting fragrance could look in the digital age.
For Chance, the launch took place in London, in a disused warehouse transformed into a gallery-style white space. For Gabrielle, the venue was one of Paris’s most famous contemporary exhibition spaces, the Palais de Tokyo.
Guests – including the face of the fragrance, Kristen Stewart, and DJ for the evening, Pharrell Williams – took a high-tech immersive “fragrance journey” into the world of Gabrielle, including a holographic perfume bottle that burst into a shower of virtual white flowers (white flowers are the centerpiece of the new scent); a deconstructed glass bottle through which you could walk; and a GIF-booth which allowed you to film yourself looking as if you were jumping around inside the perfume bottle itself.
Chanel, of course, is known for its relentless embrace of the new, but this fragrance moment was also an opportunity to celebrate the brand’s heritage.
The party was attended by Olivier Polge, Chanel’s in-house perfumer, who created Gabrielle, and also his father Jacques, the previous Chanel nose and creator of the previous blockbuster, Chance. Olivier has described the new scent as an “abstract floral,” and it succeeds in being both clean and modern yet utterly recognisable as a perfume by Chanel. And judging by the action in the GIF-booth, the selfie generation are already sold.
[“Source-vogue”]