Chanel Pour Monsieur by Chanel, 1955

My wife bought this for me at Caracas Airport, a strange place to find a classic French fragrance. It had long been on my wish list, and I was not disappointed when she brought it home. Such a superbly crafted, subtly blended fragrance. You know you're going to smell good whenever you put this on. And yet, after a year or so of fairly regular wear, I became too accustomed to it. Was it really that great, after all? Was it a little too artificially, dare I say it, sickly sweet? I persevered with it, but I had my doubts. And then, this Wednesday, I was jogging along by the old canal on my break at work, sweating and looking shabby in my Brighton & Hove Albion football shirt and tracksuit bottoms, getting more and more bedraggled in the warm, late-summer rain, when I saw a Chinese man on the towpath up ahead of me in the distance. As I got closer, I could see he was dressed smartly in a not-so-expensive suit, but he looked dapper enough. He was just standing there, holding an umbrella in the rain, staring at nothing in particular, contemplating the canal, as if he were waiting for the rain to stop. It was a curious sight to see, among the usual parade of joggers and cyclists and mothers with prams, and as I ran past him I caught his scent, and it was, undeniably, Chanel Pour Monsieur. It smelled divine, sublime, and whenever I might find myself doubting this scent again, I will remember this Chinese man, with his suit and his umbrella in the rain, and I will know I have made the right choice to wear it again.

*Note: This is a review of the current version of Chanel Pour Monsieur. Chanel Pour Monsieur goes on with a gorgeous blast of natural lemon and an herbal lime-like lemon verbena. The lemon-lime herbal citrus accord hangs around well into the heart notes, where the scent turns very powdery while also adding basil and ginger root. Also present is some of the oakmoss from the base peeping through into the heart. During the dry-down the powder dissipates and a nice rooty vetiver takes over, joining a still ever-present oakmoss. Projection and longevity are both well-below average. As soon as I sprayed on Pour Monsieur, I was captivated by the herbal lemon-lime accord that immediately makes itself known. Unfortunately, the powdery heart is a bit more powdery than I like to see, and certainly I wish it could have been toned down. That said, it still smells pleasant throughout, and when the vetiver and oakmoss from the base notes appear, the scent gets better still. I kind of liken the overall smell as a cross between vintage Monsieur de Givenchy's subtle controlled and pleasant nature and the powdery aspects of New York by Parfums de Nicolai. While I like and own all three of these great scents, I prefer vintage Monsieur de Givenchy's non-powdery nature instead focusing more on the citrus and oakmoss, and New York's greater projection and longevity. Still, Chanel Pour Monsieur was released first, and the two other greats just mentioned owe a lot to the groundwork laid down by Henri Robert and Chanel in 1955. This must have been quite the landmark release back then and Pour Monsieur is certainly worthy of its classic chypre status. While I may prefer a handful of other chypres over it, I still give Chanel Pour Monsieur a very strong 3.5 to 4 stars out of 5. Maybe the vintage version of this would have been even better before the relatively recent oakmoss restrictions?